****The Project Gutenberg Etext of several works by Emile Zola****
Nana, Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Bacailler


This etext was prepared by Donald Lainson, Toronto, Canada.





CONTENTS


NANA

THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER

CAPTAIN BURLE

THE DEATH OF OLIVIER BACAILLE





NANA

by

Emile Zola



CHAPTER I


At nine o'clock in the evening the body of the house at the Theatres 
des Varietes was still all but empty.  A few individuals, it is 
true, were sitting quietly waiting in the balcony and stalls, but 
these were lost, as it were, among the ranges of seats whose 
coverings of cardinal velvet loomed in the subdued light of the 
dimly burning luster.  A shadow enveloped the great red splash of 
the curtain, and not a sound came from the stage, the unlit 
footlights, the scattered desks of the orchestra.  It was only high 
overhead in the third gallery, round the domed ceiling where nude 
females and children flew in heavens which had turned green in the 
gaslight, that calls and laughter were audible above a continuous 
hubbub of voices, and heads in women's and workmen's caps were 
ranged, row above row, under the wide-vaulted bays with their gilt-
surrounding adornments.  Every few seconds an attendant would make 
her appearance, bustling along with tickets in her hand and piloting 
in front of her a gentleman and a lady, who took their seats, he in 
his evening dress, she sitting slim and undulant beside him while 
her eyes wandered slowly round the house.

Two young men appeared in the stalls; they kept standing and looked 
about them.

"Didn't I say so, Hector?" cried the elder of the two, a tall fellow 
with little black mustaches.  "We're too early!  You might quite 
well have allowed me to finish my cigar."

An attendant was passing.

"Oh, Monsieur Fauchery," she said familiarly, "it won't begin for 
half an hour yet!"

"Then why do they advertise for nine o'clock?" muttered Hector, 
whose long thin face assumed an expression of vexation.  "Only this 
morning Clarisse, who's in the piece, swore that they'd begin at 
nine o'clock punctually."

For a moment they remained silent and, looking upward, scanned the 
shadowy boxes.  But the green paper with which these were hung 
rendered them more shadowy still.  Down below, under the dress 
circle, the lower boxes were buried in utter night.  In those on the 
second tier there was only one stout lady, who was stranded, as it 
were, on the velvet-covered balustrade in front of her.  On the 
right hand and on the left, between lofty pilasters, the stage 
boxes, bedraped with long-fringed scalloped hangings, remained 
untenanted.  The house with its white and gold, relieved by soft 
green tones, lay only half disclosed to view, as though full of a 
fine dust shed from the little jets of flame in the great glass 
luster.

"Did you get your stage box for Lucy?" asked Hector.

"Yes," replied his companion, "but I had some trouble to get it.  
Oh, there's no danger of Lucy coming too early!"

He stifled a slight yawn; then after a pause:

"You're in luck's way, you are, since you haven't been at a first 
night before.  The Blonde Venus will be the event of the year.  
People have been talking about it for six months.  Oh, such music, 
my dear boy!  Such a sly dog, Bordenave!  He knows his business and 
has kept this for the exhibition season."  Hector was religiously 
attentive.  He asked a question.

"And Nana, the new star who's going to play Venus, d'you know her?"

"There you are; you're beginning again!" cried Fauchery, casting up 
his arms.  "Ever since this morning people have been dreeing me with 
Nana.  I've met more than twenty people, and it's Nana here and Nana 
there!  What do I know?  Am I acquainted with all the light ladies 
in Paris?  Nana is an invention of Bordenave's!  It must be a fine 
one!"

He calmed himself, but the emptiness of the house, the dim light of 
the luster, the churchlike sense of self-absorption which the place 
inspired, full as it was of whispering voices and the sound of doors 
banging--all these got on his nerves.

"No, by Jove," he said all of a sudden, "one's hair turns gray here.  
I--I'm going out.  Perhaps we shall find Bordenave downstairs.  
He'll give us information about things."

Downstairs in the great marble-paved entrance hall, where the box 
office was, the public were beginning to show themselves.  Through 
the three open gates might have been observed, passing in, the 
ardent life of the boulevards, which were all astir and aflare under 
the fine April night.  The sound of carriage wheels kept stopping 
suddenly; carriage doors were noisily shut again, and people began 
entering in small groups, taking their stand before the ticket 
bureau and climbing the double flight of stairs at the end of the 
hall, up which the women loitered with swaying hips.  Under the 
crude gaslight, round the pale, naked walls of the entrance hall, 
which with its scanty First Empire decorations suggested the 
peristyle of a toy temple, there was a flaring display of lofty 
yellow posters bearing the name of "Nana" in great black letters.  
Gentlemen, who seemed to be glued to the entry, were reading them; 
others, standing about, were engaged in talk, barring the doors of 
the house in so doing, while hard by the box office a thickset man 
with an extensive, close-shaven visage was giving rough answers to 
such as pressed to engage seats.

"There's Bordenave," said Fauchery as he came down the stairs.  But 
the manager had already seen him.

"Ah, ah!  You're a nice fellow!" he shouted at him from a distance.  
"That's the way you give me a notice, is it?  Why, I opened my 
Figaro this morning--never a word!"

"Wait a bit," replied Fauchery.  "I certainly must make the 
acquaintance of your Nana before talking about her.  Besides, I've 
made no promises."

Then to put an end to the discussion, he introduced his cousin, M. 
Hector de la Faloise, a young man who had come to finish his 
education in Paris.  The manager took the young man's measure at a 
glance.  But Hector returned his scrutiny with deep interest.  This, 
then, was that Bordenave, that showman of the sex who treated women 
like a convict overseer, that clever fellow who was always at full 
steam over some advertising dodge, that shouting, spitting, thigh-
slapping fellow, that cynic with the soul of a policeman!  Hector 
was under the impression that he ought to discover some amiable 
observation for the occasion.

"Your theater--" he began in dulcet tones.

Bordenave interrupted him with a savage phrase, as becomes a man who 
dotes on frank situations.

"Call it my brothel!"

At this Fauchery laughed approvingly, while La Faloise stopped with 
his pretty speech strangled in his throat, feeling very much shocked 
and striving to appear as though he enjoyed the phrase.  The manager 
had dashed off to shake hands with a dramatic critic whose column 
had considerable influence.  When he returned La Faloise was 
recovering.  He was afraid of being treated as a provincial if he 
showed himself too much nonplused.

"I have been told," he began again, longing positively to find 
something to say, "that Nana has a delicious voice."

"Nana?" cried the manager, shrugging his shoulders.  "The voice of a 
squirt!"

The young man made haste to add:

"Besides being a first-rate comedian!"

"She?  Why she's a lump!  She has no notion what to do with her 
hands and feet."

La Faloise blushed a little.  He had lost his bearings.  He 
stammered:

"I wouldn't have missed this first representation tonight for the 
world.  I was aware that your theater--"

"Call it my brothel," Bordenave again interpolated with the frigid 
obstinacy of a man convinced.

Meanwhile Fauchery, with extreme calmness, was looking at the women 
as they came in.  He went to his cousin's rescue when he saw him all 
at sea and doubtful whether to laugh or to be angry.

"Do be pleasant to Bordenave--call his theater what he wishes you 
to, since it amuses him.  And you, my dear fellow, don't keep us 
waiting about for nothing.  If your Nana neither sings nor acts 
you'll find you've made a blunder, that's all.  It's what I'm afraid 
of, if the truth be told."

"A blunder!  A blunder!" shouted the manager, and his face grew 
purple.  "Must a woman know how to act and sing?  Oh, my chicken, 
you're too STOOPID.  Nana has other good points, by heaven!--
something which is as good as all the other things put together.  
I've smelled it out; it's deuced pronounced with her, or I've got 
the scent of an idiot.  You'll see, you'll see!  She's only got to 
come on, and all the house will be gaping at her."

He had held up his big hands which were trembling under the 
influence of his eager enthusiasm, and now, having relieved his 
feelings, he lowered his voice and grumbled to himself:

"Yes, she'll go far!  Oh yes, s'elp me, she'll go far!  A skin--oh, 
what a skin she's got!"

Then as Fauchery began questioning him he consented to enter into a 
detailed explanation, couched in phraseology so crude that Hector de 
la Faloise felt slightly disgusted.  He had been thick with Nana, 
and he was anxious to start her on the stage.  Well, just about that 
time he was in search of a Venus.  He--he never let a woman encumber 
him for any length of time; he preferred to let the public enjoy the 
benefit of her forthwith.  But there was a deuce of a row going on 
in his shop, which had been turned topsy-turvy by that big damsel's 
advent.  Rose Mignon, his star, a comic actress of much subtlety and 
an adorable singer, was daily threatening to leave him in the lurch, 
for she was furious and guessed the presence of a rival.  And as for 
the bill, good God!  What a noise there had been about it all!  It 
had ended by his deciding to print the names of the two actresses in 
the same-sized type.  But it wouldn't do to bother him.  Whenever 
any of his little women, as he called them--Simonne or Clarisse, for 
instance--wouldn't go the way he wanted her to he just up with his 
foot and caught her one in the rear.  Otherwise life was impossible.  
Oh yes, he sold 'em; HE knew what they fetched, the wenches!

"Tut!" he cried, breaking off short.  "Mignon and Steiner.  Always 
together.  You know, Steiner's getting sick of Rose; that's why the 
husband dogs his steps now for fear of his slipping away."

On the pavement outside, the row of gas jets flaring on the cornice 
of the theater cast a patch of brilliant light.  Two small trees, 
violently green, stood sharply out against it, and a column gleamed 
in such vivid illumination that one could read the notices thereon 
at a distance, as though in broad daylight, while the dense night of 
the boulevard beyond was dotted with lights above the vague outline 
of an ever-moving crowd.  Many men did not enter the theater at once 
but stayed outside to talk while finishing their cigars under the 
rays of the line of gas jets, which shed a sallow pallor on their 
faces and silhouetted their short black shadows on the asphalt.  
Mignon, a very tall, very broad fellow, with the square-shaped head 
of a strong man at a fair, was forcing a passage through the midst 
of the groups and dragging on his arm the banker Steiner, an 
exceedingly small man with a corporation already in evidence and a 
round face framed in a setting of beard which was already growing 
gray.

"Well," said Bordenave to the banker, "you met her yesterday in my 
office."

"Ah!  It was she, was it?" ejaculated Steiner.  "I suspected as 
much.  Only I was coming out as she was going in, and I scarcely 
caught a glimpse of her."

Mignon was listening with half-closed eyelids and nervously twisting 
a great diamond ring round his finger.  He had quite understood that 
Nana was in question.  Then as Bordenave was drawing a portrait of 
his new star, which lit a flame in the eyes of the banker, he ended 
by joining in the conversation.

"Oh, let her alone, my dear fellow; she's a low lot!  The public 
will show her the door in quick time.  Steiner, my laddie, you know 
that my wife is waiting for you in her box."

He wanted to take possession of him again.  But Steiner would not 
quit Bordenave.  In front of them a stream of people was crowding 
and crushing against the ticket office, and there was a din of 
voices, in the midst of which the name of Nana sounded with all the 
melodious vivacity of its two syllables.  The men who stood planted 
in front of the notices kept spelling it out loudly; others, in an 
interrogative tone, uttered it as they passed; while the women, at 
once restless and smiling, repeated it softly with an air of 
surprise.  Nobody knew Nana.  Whence had Nana fallen?  And stories 
and jokes, whispered from ear to ear, went the round of the crowd.  
The name was a caress in itself; it was a pet name, the very 
familiarity of which suited every lip.  Merely through enunciating 
it thus, the throng worked itself into a state of gaiety and became 
highly good natured.  A fever of curiosity urged it forward, that 
kind of Parisian curiosity which is as violent as an access of 
positive unreason.  Everybody wanted to see Nana.  A lady had the 
flounce of her dress torn off; a man lost his hat.

"Oh, you're asking me too many questions about it!" cried Bordenave, 
whom a score of men were besieging with their queries.  "You're 
going to see her, and I'm off; they want me."

He disappeared, enchanted at having fired his public.  Mignon 
shrugged his shoulders, reminding Steiner that Rose was awaiting him 
in order to show him the costume she was about to wear in the first 
act.

"By Jove!  There's Lucy out there, getting down from her carriage," 
said La Faloise to Fauchery.

It was, in fact, Lucy Stewart, a plain little woman, some forty 
years old, with a disproportionately long neck, a thin, drawn face, 
a heavy mouth, but withal of such brightness, such graciousness of 
manner, that she was really very charming.  She was bringing with 
her Caroline Hequet and her mother--Caroline a woman of a cold type 
of beauty, the mother a person of a most worthy demeanor, who looked 
as if she were stuffed with straw.

"You're coming with us?  I've kept a place for you," she said to 
Fauchery.  "Oh, decidedly not!  To see nothing!" he made answer.  
"I've a stall; I prefer being in the stalls."

Lucy grew nettled.  Did he not dare show himself in her company?  
Then, suddenly restraining herself and skipping to another topic:

"Why haven't you told me that you knew Nana?"

"Nana!  I've never set eyes on her."

"Honor bright?  I've been told that you've been to bed with her."

But Mignon, coming in front of them, his finger to his lips, made 
them a sign to be silent.  And when Lucy questioned him he pointed 
out a young man who was passing and murmured:

"Nana's fancy man."

Everybody looked at him.  He was a pretty fellow.  Fauchery 
recognized him; it was Daguenet, a young man who had run through 
three hundred thousand francs in the pursuit of women and who now 
was dabbling in stocks, in order from time to time to treat them to 
bouquets and dinners.  Lucy made the discovery that he had fine 
eyes.

"Ah, there's Blanche!" she cried.  "It's she who told me that you 
had been to bed with Nana."

Blanche de Sivry, a great fair girl, whose good-looking face showed 
signs of growing fat, made her appearance in the company of a spare, 
sedulously well-groomed and extremely distinguished man.

"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.  The Count 
de Vandeuvres carried Blanche off.  But by this time Nana's name was 
echoing more loudly than ever round the four walls of the entrance 
hall amid yearnings sharpened by delay.  Why didn't the play begin?  
The men pulled out their watches; late-comers sprang from their 
conveyances before these had fairly drawn up; the groups left the 
sidewalk, where the passers-by were crossing the now-vacant space of 
gaslit pavement, craning their necks, as they did so, in order to 
get a peep into the theater.  A street boy came up whistling and 
planted himself before a notice at the door, then cried out, "Woa, 
Nana!" in the voice of a tipsy man and hied on his way with a 
rolling gait and a shuffling of his old boots.  A laugh had arisen 
at this.  Gentlemen of unimpeachable appearance repeated: "Nana, 
woa, Nana!"  People were crushing; a dispute arose at the ticket 
office, and there was a growing clamor caused by the hum of voices 
calling on Nana, demanding Nana in one of those accesses of silly 
facetiousness and sheer animalism which pass over mobs.

But above all the din the bell that precedes the rise of the curtain 
became audible.  "They've rung; they've rung!"  The rumor reached 
the boulevard, and thereupon followed a stampede, everyone wanting 
to pass in, while the servants of the theater increased their 
forces.  Mignon, with an anxious air, at last got hold of Steiner 
again, the latter not having been to see Rose's costume.  At the 
very first tinkle of the bell La Faloise had cloven a way through 
the crowd, pulling Fauchery with him, so as not to miss the opening 
scene.  But all this eagerness on the part of the public irritated 
Lucy Stewart.  What brutes were these people to be pushing women 
like that!  She stayed in the rear of them all with Caroline Hequet 
and her mother.  The entrance hall was now empty, while beyond it 
was still heard the long-drawn rumble of the boulevard.

"As though they were always funny, those pieces of theirs!" Lucy 
kept repeating as she climbed the stair.

In the house Fauchery and La Faloise, in front of their stalls, were 
gazing about them anew.  By this time the house was resplendent.  
High jets of gas illumined the great glass chandelier with a 
rustling of yellow and rosy flames, which rained down a stream of 
brilliant light from dome to floor.  The cardinal velvets of the 
seats were shot with hues of lake, while all the gilding shonc 
again, the soft green decorations chastening its effect beneath the 
too-decided paintings of the ceiling.  The footlights were turned up 
and with a vivid flood of brilliance lit up the curtain, the heavy 
purple drapery of which had all the richness befitting a palace in a 
fairy tale and contrasted with the meanness of the proscenium, where 
cracks showed the plaster under the gilding.  The place was already 
warm.  At their music stands the orchestra were tuning their 
instruments amid a delicate trilling of flutes, a stifled tooting of 
horns, a singing of violin notes, which floated forth amid the 
increasing uproar of voices.  All the spectators were talking, 
jostling, settling themselves in a general assault upon seats; and 
the hustling rush in the side passages was now so violent that every 
door into the house was laboriously admitting the inexhaustible 
flood of people.  There were signals, rustlings of fabrics, a 
continual march past of skirts and head dresses, accentuated by the 
black hue of a dress coat or a surtout.  Notwithstanding this, the 
rows of seats were little by little getting filled up, while here 
and there a light toilet stood out from its surroundings, a head 
with a delicate profile bent forward under its chignon, where 
flashed the lightning of a jewel.  In one of the boxes the tip of a 
bare shoulder glimmered like snowy silk.  Other ladies, sitting at 
ease, languidly fanned themselves, following with their gaze the 
pushing movements of the crowd, while young gentlemen, standing up 
in the stalls, their waistcoats cut very low, gardenias in their 
buttonholes, pointed their opera glasses with gloved finger tips.

It was now that the two cousins began searching for the faces of 
those they knew.  Mignon and Steiner were together in a lower box, 
sitting side by side with their arms leaning for support on the 
velvet balustrade.  Blanche de Sivry seemed to be in sole possession 
of a stage box on the level of the stalls.  But La Faloise examined 
Daguenet before anyone else, he being in occupation of a stall two 
rows in front of his own.  Close to him, a very young man, seventeen 
years old at the outside, some truant from college, it may be, was 
straining wide a pair of fine eyes such as a cherub might have 
owned.  Fauchery smiled when he looked at him.

"Who is that lady in the balcony?" La Faloise asked suddenly.  "The 
lady with a young girl in blue beside her."

He pointed out a large woman who was excessively tight-laced, a 
woman who had been a blonde and had now become white and yellow of 
tint, her broad face, reddened with paint, looking puffy under a 
rain of little childish curls.

"It's Gaga," was Fauchery's simple reply, and as this name seemed to 
astound his cousin, he added:

"You don't know Gaga?  She was the delight of the early years of 
Louis Philippe.  Nowadays she drags her daughter about with her 
wherever she goes."

La Faloise never once glanced at the young girl.  The sight of Gaga 
moved him; his eyes did not leave her again.  He still found her 
very good looking but he dared not say so.

Meanwhile the conductor lifted his violin bow and the orchestra 
attacked the overture.  People still kept coming in; the stir and 
noise were on the increase.  Among that public, peculiar to first 
nights and never subject to change, there were little subsections 
composed of intimate friends, who smilingly forgathered again.  Old 
first-nighters, hat on head, seemed familiar and quite at ease and 
kept exchanging salutations.  All Paris was there, the Paris of 
literature, of finance and of pleasure.  There were many 
journalists, several authors, a number of stock-exchange people and 
more courtesans than honest women.  It was a singularly mixed world, 
composed, as it was, of all the talents and tarnished by all the 
vices, a world where the same fatigue and the same fever played over 
every face.  Fauchery, whom his cousin was questioning, showed him 
the boxes devoted to the newspapers and to the clubs and then named 
the dramatic critics--a lean, dried-up individual with thin, 
spiteful lips and, chief of all, a big fellow with a good-natured 
expression, lolling on the shoulder of his neighbor, a young miss 
over whom he brooded with tender and paternal eyes.

But he interrupted himself on seeing La Faloise in the act of bowing 
to some persons who occupied the box opposite.  He appeared 
surprised.

"What?" he queried.  "You know the Count Muffat de Beuville?"

"Oh, for a long time back," replied Hector.  "The Muffats had a 
property near us.  I often go to their house.  The count's with his 
wife and his father-in-law, the Marquis de Chouard."

And with some vanity--for he was happy in his cousin's astonishment--
he entered into particulars.  The marquis was a councilor of state; 
the count had recently been appointed chamberlain to the empress.  
Fauchery, who had caught up his opera glass, looked at the countess, 
a plump brunette with a white skin and fine dark eyes.

"You shall present me to them between the acts," he ended by saying.  
"I have already met the count, but I should like to go to them on 
their Tuesdays."

Energetic cries of "Hush" came from the upper galleries.  The 
overture had begun, but people were still coming in.  Late arrivals 
were obliging whole rows of spectators to rise; the doors of boxes 
were banging; loud voices were heard disputing in the passages.  And 
there was no cessation of the sound of many conversations, a sound 
similar to the loud twittering of talkative sparrows at close of 
day.  All was in confusion; the house was a medley of heads and arms 
which moved to and fro, their owners seating themselves or trying to 
make themselves comfortable or, on the other hand, excitedly 
endeavoring to remain standing so as to take a final look round.  
The cry of "Sit down, sit down!" came fiercely from the obscure 
depths of the pit.  A shiver of expectation traversed the house: at 
last people were going to make the acquaintance of this famous Nana 
with whom Paris had been occupying itself for a whole week!

Little by little, however, the buzz of talk dwindled softly down 
among occasional fresh outbursts of rough speech.  And amid this 
swooning murmur, these perishing sighs of sound, the orchestra 
struck up the small, lively notes of a waltz with a vagabond rhythm 
bubbling with roguish laughter.  The public were titillated; they 
were already on the grin.  But the gang of clappers in the foremost 
rows of the pit applauded furiously.  The curtain rose.

"By George!" exclaimed La Faloise, still talking away.  "There's a 
man with Lucy."

He was looking at the stage box on the second tier to his right, the 
front of which Caroline and Lucy were occupying.  At the back of 
this box were observable the worthy countenance of Caroline's mother 
and the side face of a tall young man with a noble head of light 
hair and an irreproachable getup.

"Do look!" La Faloise again insisted.  "There's a man there."

Fauchery decided to level his opera glass at the stage box.  But he 
turned round again directly.

"Oh, it's Labordette," he muttered in a careless voice, as though 
that gentle man's presence ought to strike all the world as though 
both natural and immaterial.

Behind the cousins people shouted "Silence!"  They had to cease 
talking.  A motionless fit now seized the house, and great stretches 
of heads, all erect and attentive, sloped away from stalls to 
topmost gallery.  The first act of the Blonde Venus took place in 
Olympus, a pasteboard Olympus, with clouds in the wings and the 
throne of Jupiter on the right of the stage.  First of all Iris and 
Ganymede, aided by a troupe of celestial attendants, sang a chorus 
while they arranged the seats of the gods for the council.  Once 
again the prearranged applause of the clappers alone burst forth; 
the public, a little out of their depth, sat waiting.  Nevertheless, 
La Faloise had clapped Clarisse Besnus, one of Bordenave's little 
women, who played Iris in a soft blue dress with a great scarf of 
the seven colors of the rainbow looped round her waist.

"You know, she draws up her chemise to put that on," he said to 
Fauchery, loud enough to be heard by those around him.  "We tried 
the trick this morning.  It was all up under her arms and round the 
small of her back."

But a slight rustling movement ran through the house; Rose Mignon 
had just come on the stage as Diana.  Now though she had neither the 
face nor the figure for the part, being thin and dark and of the 
adorable type of ugliness peculiar to a Parisian street child, she 
nonetheless appeared charming and as though she were a satire on the 
personage she represented.  Her song at her entrance on the stage 
was full of lines quaint enough to make you cry with laughter and of 
complaints about Mars, who was getting ready to desert her for the 
companionship of Venus.  She sang it with a chaste reserve so full 
of sprightly suggestiveness that the public warmed amain.  The 
husband and Steiner, sitting side by side, were laughing 
complaisantly, and the whole house broke out in a roar when 
Prulliere, that great favorite, appeared as a general, a masquerade 
Mars, decked with an enormous plume and dragging along a sword, the 
hilt of which reached to his shoulder.  As for him, he had had 
enough of Diana; she had been a great deal too coy with him, he 
averred.  Thereupon Diana promised to keep a sharp eye on him and to 
be revenged.  The duet ended with a comic yodel which Prulliere 
delivered very amusingly with the yell of an angry tomcat.  He had 
about him all the entertaining fatuity of a young leading gentleman 
whose love affairs prosper, and he rolled around the most swaggering 
glances, which excited shrill feminine laughter in the boxes.

Then the public cooled again, for the ensuing scenes were found 
tiresome.  Old Bosc, an imbecile Jupiter with head crushed beneath 
the weight of an immense crown, only just succeeded in raising a 
smile among his audience when he had a domestic altercation with 
Juno on the subject of the cook's accounts.  The march past of the 
gods, Neptune, Pluto, Minerva and the rest, was well-nigh spoiling 
everything.  People grew impatient; there was a restless, slowly 
growing murmur; the audience ceased to take an interest in the 
performance and looked round at the house.  Lucy began laughing with 
Labordette; the Count de Vandeuvres was craning his neck in 
conversation behind Blanche's sturdy shoulders, while Fauchery, out 
of the corners of his eyes, took stock of the Muffats, of whom the 
count appeared very serious, as though he had not understood the 
allusions, and the countess smiled vaguely, her eyes lost in 
reverie.  But on a sudden, in this uncomfortable state of things, 
the applause of the clapping contingent rattled out with the 
regularity of platoon firing.  People turned toward the stage.  Was 
it Nana at last?  This Nana made one wait with a vengeance.

It was a deputation of mortals whom Ganymede and Iris had 
introduced, respectable middle-class persons, deceived husbands, all 
of them, and they came before the master of the gods to proffer a 
complaint against Venus, who was assuredly inflaming their good 
ladies with an excess of ardor.  The chorus, in quaint, dolorous 
tones, broken by silences full of pantomimic admissions, caused 
great amusement.  A neat phrase went the round of the house: "The 
cuckolds' chorus, the cuckolds' chorus," and it "caught on," for 
there was an encore. The singers' heads were droll; their faces were 
discovered to be in keeping with the phrase, especially that of a 
fat man which was as round as the moon.  Meanwhile Vulcan arrived in 
a towering rage, demanding back his wife who had slipped away three 
days ago.  The chorus resumed their plaint, calling on Vulcan, the 
god of the cuckolds.  Vulcan's part was played by Fontan, a comic 
actor of talent, at once vulgar and original, and he had a role of 
the wildest whimsicality and was got up as a village blacksmith, 
fiery red wig, bare arms tattooed with arrow-pierced hearts and all 
the rest of it.  A woman's voice cried in a very high key, "Oh, 
isn't he ugly?" and all the ladies laughed and applauded.

Then followed a scene which seemed interminable.  Jupiter in the 
course of it seemed never to be going to finish assembling the 
Council of Gods in order to submit thereto the deceived husband's 
requests.  And still no Nana!  Was the management keeping Nana for 
the fall of the curtain then?  So long a period of expectancy had 
ended by annoying the public.  Their murmurings began again.

"It's going badly," said Mignon radiantly to Steiner.  "She'll get a 
pretty reception; you'll see!"

At that very moment the clouds at the back of the stage were cloven 
apart and Venus appeared.  Exceedingly tall, exceedingly strong, for 
her eighteen years, Nana, in her goddess's white tunic and with her 
light hair simply flowing unfastened over her shoulders, came down 
to the footlights with a quiet certainty of movement and a laugh of 
greeting for the public and struck up her grand ditty:

     "When Venus roams at eventide."

From the second verse onward people looked at each other all over 
the house.  Was this some jest, some wager on Bordenave's part?  
Never had a more tuneless voice been heard or one managed with less 
art.  Her manager judged of her excellently; she certainly sang like 
a squirt.  Nay, more, she didn't even know how to deport herself on 
the stage: she thrust her arms in front of her while she swayed her 
whole body to and fro in a manner which struck the audience as 
unbecoming and disagreeable.  Cries of "Oh, oh!" were already rising 
in the pit and the cheap places.  There was a sound of whistling, 
too, when a voice in the stalls, suggestive of a molting cockerel, 
cried out with great conviction:

"That's very smart!"

All the house looked round.  It was the cherub, the truant from the 
boardingschool, who sat with his fine eyes very wide open and his 
fair face glowing very hotly at sight of Nana.  When he saw 
everybody turning toward him be grew extremely red at the thought of 
having thus unconsciously spoken aloud.  Daguenet, his neighbor, 
smilingly examined him; the public laughed, as though disarmed and 
no longer anxious to hiss; while the young gentlemen in white 
gloves, fascinated in their turn by Nana's gracious contours, lolled 
back in their seats and applauded.

"That's it!  Well done!  Bravo!"

Nana, in the meantime, seeing the house laughing, began to laugh 
herself.  The gaiety of all redoubled itself.  She was an amusing 
creature, all the same, was that fine girl!  Her laughter made a 
love of a little dimple appear in her chin.  She stood there 
waiting, not bored in the least, familiar with her audience, falling 
into step with them at once, as though she herself were admitting 
with a wink that she had not two farthings' worth of talent but that 
it did not matter at all, that, in fact, she had other good points.  
And then after having made a sign to the conductor which plainly 
signified, "Go ahead, old boy!" she began her second verse:

     "'Tis Venus who at midnight passes--"

Still the same acidulated voice, only that now it tickled the public 
in the right quarter so deftly that momentarily it caused them to 
give a little shiver of pleasure.  Nana still smiled her smile: it 
lit up her little red mouth and shone in her great eyes, which were 
of the clearest blue.  When she came to certain rather lively verses 
a delicate sense of enjoyment made her tilt her nose, the rosy 
nostrils of which lifted and fell, while a bright flush suffused her 
cheeks.  She still swung herself up and down, for she only knew how 
to do that.  And the trick was no longer voted ugly; on the 
contrary, the men raised their opera glasses.  When she came to the 
end of a verse her voice completely failed her, and she was well 
aware that she never would get through with it.  Thereupon, rather 
than fret herself, she kicked up her leg, which forthwith was 
roundly outlined under her diaphanous tunic, bent sharply backward, 
so that her bosom was thrown upward and forward, and stretched her 
arms out.  Applause burst forth on all sides.  In the twinkling of 
an eye she had turned on her heel and was going up the stage, 
presenting the nape of her neck to the spectators' gaze, a neck 
where the red-gold hair showed like some animal's fell.  Then the 
plaudits became frantic.

The close of the act was not so exciting.  Vulcan wanted to slap 
Venus.  The gods held a consultation and decided to go and hold an 
inquiry on earth before granting the deceived husband satisfaction.  
It was then that Diana surprised a tender conversation between Venus 
and Mars and vowed that she would not take her eyes off them during 
the whole of the voyage.  There was also a scene where Love, played 
by a little twelve-year-old chit, answered every question put to her 
with "Yes, Mamma!  No, Mamma!" in a winy-piny tone, her fingers in 
her nose.  At last Jupiter, with the severity of a master who is 
growing cross, shut Love up in a dark closet, bidding her conjugate 
the verb "I love" twenty times.  The finale was more appreciated: it 
was a chorus which both troupe and orchestra performed with great 
brilliancy.  But the curtain once down, the clappers tried in vain 
to obtain a call, while the whole house was already up and making 
for the doors.

The crowd trampled and jostled, jammed, as it were, between the rows 
of seats, and in so doing exchanged expressions.  One phrase only 
went round:

"It's idiotic."  A critic was saying that it would be one's duty to 
do a pretty bit of slashing.  The piece, however, mattered very 
little, for people were talking about Nana before everything else.  
Fauchery and La Faloise, being among the earliest to emerge, met 
Steiner and Mignon in the passage outside the stalls.  In this 
gaslit gut of a place, which was as narrow and circumscribed as a 
gallery in a mine, one was well-nigh suffocated.  They stopped a 
moment at the foot of the stairs on the right of the house, 
protected by the final curve of the balusters.  The audience from 
the cheap places were coming down the steps with a continuous tramp 
of heavy boots; a stream of black dress coats was passing, while an 
attendant was making every possible effort to protect a chair, on 
which she had piled up coats and cloaks, from the onward pushing of 
the crowd.

"Surely I know her," cried Steiner, the moment he perceived 
Fauchery.  "I'm certain I've seen her somewhere--at the casino, I 
imagine, and she got herself taken up there--she was so drunk."

"As for me," said the journalist, "I don't quite know where it was.  
I am like you; I certainly have come across her."

He lowered his voice and asked, laughing:

"At the Tricons', perhaps."

"Egad, it was in a dirty place," Mignon declared.  He seemed 
exasperated.  "It's disgusting that the public give such a reception 
to the first trollop that comes by.  There'll soon be no more decent 
women on the stage.  Yes, I shall end by forbidding Rose to play."

Fauchery could not restrain a smile.  Meanwhile the downward shuffle 
of the heavy shoes on the steps did not cease, and a little man in a 
workman's cap was heard crying in a drawling voice:

"Oh my, she ain't no wopper!  There's some pickings there!"

In the passage two young men, delicately curled and formally 
resplendent in turndown collars and the rest, were disputing 
together.  One of them was repeating the words, "Beastly, beastly!" 
without stating any reasons; the other was replying with the words, 
"Stunning, stunning!" as though he, too, disdained all argument.

La Faloise declared her to be quite the thing; only he ventured to 
opine that she would be better still if she were to cultivate her 
voice.  Steiner, who was no longer listening, seemed to awake with a 
start.  Whatever happens, one must wait, he thought.  Perhaps 
everything will be spoiled in the following acts.  The public had 
shown complaisance, but it was certainly not yet taken by storm.  
Mignon swore that the piece would never finish, and when Fauchery 
and La Faloise left them in order to go up to the foyer he took 
Steiner's arm and, leaning hard against his shoulder, whispered in 
his ear:

"You're going to see my wife's costume for the second act, old 
fellow.  It IS just blackguardly."

Upstairs in the foyer three glass chandeliers burned with a 
brilliant light.  The two cousins hesitated an instant before 
entering, for the widely opened glazed doors afforded a view right 
through the gallery--a view of a surging sea of heads, which two 
currents, as it were, kept in a continuous eddying movement.  But 
they entered after all.  Five or six groups of men, talking very 
loudly and gesticulating, were obstinately discussing the play amid 
these violent interruptions; others were filing round, their heels, 
as they turned, sounding sharply on the waxed floor.  To right and 
left, between columns of variegated imitation marble, women were 
sitting on benches covered with red velvet and viewing the passing 
movement of the crowd with an air of fatigue as though the heat had 
rendered them languid.  In the lofty mirrors behind them one saw the 
reflection of their chignons.  At the end of the room, in front of 
the bar, a man with a huge corporation was drinking a glass of fruit 
syrup.

But Fauchery, in order to breathe more freely, had gone to the 
balcony.  La Faloise, who was studying the photographs of actresses 
hung in frames alternating with the mirrors between the columns, 
ended by following him.  They had extinguished the line of gas jets 
on the facade of the theater, and it was dark and very cool on the 
balcony, which seemed to them unoccupied.  Solitary and enveloped in 
shadow, a young man was standing, leaning his arms on the stone 
balustrade, in the recess to the right.  He was smoking a cigarette, 
of which the burning end shone redly.  Fauchery recognized Daguenet.  
They shook hands warmly.

"What are you after there, my dear fellow?" asked the journalist.  
"You're hiding yourself in holes and crannies--you, a man who never 
leaves the stalls on a first night!"

"But I'm smoking, you see," replied Daguenet.

Then Fauchery, to put him out of countenance:

"Well, well!  What's your opinion of the new actress?  She's being 
roughly handled enough in the passages."

"Bah!" muttered Daguenet.  "They're people whom she'll have had 
nothing to do with!"

That was the sum of his criticism of Nana's talent.  La Faloise 
leaned forward and looked down at the boulevard.  Over against them 
the windows of a hotel and of a club were brightly lit up, while on 
the pavement below a dark mass of customers occupied the tables of 
the Cafe de Madrid.  Despite the lateness of the hour the crowd were 
still crushing and being crushed; people were advancing with 
shortened step; a throng was constantly emerging from the Passage 
Jouffroy; individuals stood waiting five or six minutes before they 
could cross the roadway, to such a distance did the string of 
carriages extend.

"What a moving mass!  And what a noise!" La Faloise kept 
reiterating, for Paris still astonished him.

The bell rang for some time; the foyer emptied.  There was a 
hurrying of people in the passages.  The curtain was already up when 
whole bands of spectators re-entered the house amid the irritated 
expressions of those who were once more in their places.  Everyone 
took his seat again with an animated look and renewed attention.  La 
Faloise directed his first glance in Gaga's direction, but he was 
dumfounded at seeing by her side the tall fair man who but recently 
had been in Lucy's stage box.

"What IS that man's name?" he asked.

Fauchery failed to observe him.

"Ah yes, it's Labordette," he said at last with the same careless 
movement.  The scenery of the second act came as a surprise.  It 
represented a suburban Shrove Tuesday dance at the Boule Noire.  
Masqueraders were trolling a catch, the chorus of which was 
accompanied with a tapping of their heels.  This 'Arryish departure, 
which nobody had in the least expected, caused so much amusement 
that the house encored the catch.  And it was to this entertainment 
that the divine band, let astray by Iris, who falsely bragged that 
he knew the Earth well, were now come in order to proceed with their 
inquiry.  They had put on disguises so as to preserve their 
incognito.  Jupiter came on the stage as King Dagobert, with his 
breeches inside out and a huge tin crown on his head.  Phoebus 
appeared as the Postillion of Lonjumeau and Minerva as a Norman 
nursemaid.  Loud bursts of merriment greeted Mars, who wore an 
outrageous uniform, suggestive of an Alpine admiral.  But the shouts 
of laughter became uproarious when Neptune came in view, clad in a 
blouse, a high, bulging workman's cap on his head, lovelocks glued 
to his temples.  Shuffling along in slippers, he cried in a thick 
brogue.

"Well, I'm blessed!  When ye're a masher it'll never do not to let 
'em love yer!"

There were some shouts of "Oh! Oh!" while the ladies held their fans 
one degree higher.  Lucy in her stage box laughed so obstreperously 
that Caroline Hequet silenced her with a tap of her fan.

From that moment forth the piece was saved--nay, more, promised a 
great success.  This carnival of the gods, this dragging in the mud 
of their Olympus, this mock at a whole religion, a whole world of 
poetry, appeared in the light of a royal entertainment.  The fever 
of irreverence gained the literary first-night world: legend was 
trampled underfoot; ancient images were shattered.  Jupiter's make-
up was capital.  Mars was a success.  Royalty became a farce and the 
army a thing of folly.  When Jupiter, grown suddenly amorous of a 
little laundress, began to knock off a mad cancan, Simonne, who was 
playing the part of the laundress, launched a kick at the master of 
the immortals' nose and addressed him so drolly as "My big daddy!" 
that an immoderate fit of laughter shook the whole house.  While 
they were dancing Phoebus treated Minerva to salad bowls of negus, 
and Neptune sat in state among seven or eight women who regaled him 
with cakes.  Allusions were eagerly caught; indecent meanings were 
attached to them; harmless phrases were diverted from their proper 
significations in the light of exclamations issuing from the stalls.  
For a long time past the theatrical public had not wallowed in folly 
more irreverent.  It rested them.

Nevertheless, the action of the piece advanced amid these fooleries.  
Vulcan, as an elegant young man clad, down to his gloves, entirely 
in yellow and with an eyeglass stuck in his eye, was forever running 
after Venus, who at last made her appearance as a fishwife, a 
kerchief on her head and her bosom, covered with big gold trinkets, 
in great evidence.  Nana was so white and plump and looked so 
natural in a part demanding wide hips and a voluptuous mouth that 
she straightway won the whole house.  On her account Rose Mignon was 
forgotten, though she was made up as a delicious baby, with a 
wicker-work burlet on her head and a short muslin frock and had just 
sighed forth Diana's plaints in a sweetly pretty voice.  The other 
one, the big wench who slapped her thighs and clucked like a hen, 
shed round her an odor of life, a sovereign feminine charm, with 
which the public grew intoxicated.  From the second act onward 
everything was permitted her.  She might hold herself awkwardly; she 
might fail to sing some note in tune; she might forget her words--it 
mattered not: she had only to turn and laugh to raise shouts of 
applause.  When she gave her famous kick from the hip the stalls 
were fired, and a glow of passion rose upward, upward, from gallery 
to gallery, till it reached the gods.  It was a triumph, too, when 
she led the dance.  She was at home in that: hand on hip, she 
enthroned Venus in the gutter by the pavement side.  And the music 
seemed made for her plebeian voice--shrill, piping music, with 
reminiscences of Saint-Cloud Fair, wheezings of clarinets and 
playful trills on the part of the little flutes.

Two numbers were again encored.  The opening waltz, that waltz with 
the naughty rhythmic beat, had returned and swept the gods with it.  
Juno, as a peasant woman, caught Jupiter and his little laundress 
cleverly and boxed his ears.  Diana, surprising Venus in the act of 
making an assignation with Mars, made haste to indicate hour and 
place to Vulcan, who cried, "I've hit on a plan!"  The rest of the 
act did not seem very clear.  The inquiry ended in a final galop 
after which Jupiter, breathless, streaming with perspiration and 
minus his crown, declared that the little women of Earth were 
delicious and that the men were all to blame.

The curtain was falling, when certain voices, rising above the storm 
of bravos, cried uproariously:

"All!  All!"

Thereupon the curtain rose again; the artistes reappeared hand in 
hand.  In the middle of the line Nana and Rose Mignon stood side by 
side, bowing and curtsying.  The audience applauded; the clappers 
shouted acclamations.  Then little by little the house emptied.

"I must go and pay my respects to the Countess Muffat," said La 
Faloise.  "Exactly so; you'll present me," replied Fauchery; "we'll 
go down afterward."

But it was not easy to get to the first-tier boxes.  In the passage 
at the top of the stairs there was a crush.  In order to get forward 
at all among the various groups you had to make yourself small and 
to slide along, using your elbows in so doing.  Leaning under a 
copper lamp, where a jet of gas was burning, the bulky critic was 
sitting in judgment on the piece in presence of an attentive circle.  
People in passing mentioned his name to each other in muttered 
tones.  He had laughed the whole act through--that was the rumor 
going the round of the passages--nevertheless, he was now very 
severe and spoke of taste and morals.  Farther off the thin-lipped 
critic was brimming over with a benevolence which had an unpleasant 
aftertaste, as of milk turned sour.

Fauchery glanced along, scrutinizing the boxes through the round 
openings in each door.  But the Count de Vandeuvres stopped him with 
a question, and when he was informed that the two cousins were going 
to pay their respects to the Muffats, he pointed out to them box 
seven, from which he had just emerged.  Then bending down and 
whispering in the journalist's ear:

"Tell me, my dear fellow," he said, "this Nana--surely she's the 
girl we saw one evening at the corner of the Rue de Provence?"

"By Jove, you're right!" cried Fauchery.  "I was saying that I had 
come across her!"

La Faloise presented his cousin to Count Muffat de Beuville, who 
appeared very frigid.  But on hearing the name Fauchery the countess 
raised her head and with a certain reserve complimented the 
paragraphist on his articles in the Figaro.  Leaning on the velvet-
covered support in front of her, she turned half round with a pretty 
movement of the shoulders.  They talked for a short time, and the 
Universal Exhibition was mentioned.

"It will be very fine," said the count, whose square-cut, regular-
featured face retained a certain gravity.

"I visited the Champ de Mars today and returned thence truly 
astonished."

"They say that things won't be ready in time," La Faloise ventured 
to remark.  "There's infinite confusion there--"

But the count interrupted him in his severe voice:

"Things will be ready.  The emperor desires it."

Fauchery gaily recounted how one day, when he had gone down thither 
in search of a subject for an article, he had come near spending all 
his time in the aquarium, which was then in course of construction.  
The countess smiled.  Now and again she glanced down at the body of 
the house, raising an arm which a white glove covered to the elbow 
and fanning herself with languid hand.  The house dozed, almost 
deserted.  Some gentlemen in the stalls had opened out newspapers, 
and ladies received visits quite comfortably, as though they were at 
their own homes.  Only a well-bred whispering was audible under the 
great chandelier, the light of which was softened in the fine cloud 
of dust raised by the confused movements of the interval.  At the 
different entrances men were crowding in order to talk to ladies who 
remained seated.  They stood there motionless for a few seconds, 
craning forward somewhat and displaying the great white bosoms of 
their shirt fronts.

"We count on you next Tuesday," said the countess to La Faloise, and 
she invited Fauchery, who bowed.

Not a word was said of the play; Nana's name was not once mentioned.  
The count was so glacially dignified that he might have been 
supposed to be taking part at a sitting of the legislature.  In 
order to explain their presence that evening he remarked simply that 
his father-in-law was fond of the theater.  The door of the box must 
have remained open, for the Marquis de Chouard, who had gone out in 
order to leave his seat to the visitors, was back again.  He was 
straightening up his tall, old figure.  His face looked soft and 
white under a broad-brimmed hat, and with his restless eyes he 
followed the movements of the women who passed.

The moment the countess had given her invitation Fauchery took his 
leave, feeling that to talk about the play would not be quite the 
thing.  La Faloise was the last to quit the box.  He had just 
noticed the fair-haired Labordette, comfortably installed in the 
Count de Vandeuvres's stage box and chatting at very close quarters 
with Blanche de Sivry.

"Gad," he said after rejoining his cousin, "that Labordette knows 
all the girls then!  He's with Blanche now."

"Doubtless he knows them all," replied Fauchery quietly.  "What 
d'you want to be taken for, my friend?"

The passage was somewhat cleared of people, and Fauchery was just 
about to go downstairs when Lucy Stewart called him.  She was quite 
at the other end of the corridor, at the door of her stage box.  
They were getting cooked in there, she said, and she took up the 
whole corridor in company with Caroline Hequet and her mother, all 
three nibbling burnt almonds.  A box opener was chatting maternally 
with them.  Lucy fell out with the journalist.  He was a pretty 
fellow; to be sure!  He went up to see other women and didn't even 
come and ask if they were thirsty!  Then, changing the subject:

"You know, dear boy, I think Nana very nice."

She wanted him to stay in the stage box for the last act, but he 
made his escape, promising to catch them at the door afterward.  
Downstairs in front of the theater Fauchery and La Faloise lit 
cigarettes.  A great gathering blocked the sidewalk, a stream of men 
who had come down from the theater steps and were inhaling the fresh 
night air in the boulevards, where the roar and battle had 
diminished.

Meanwhile Mignon had drawn Steiner away to the Cafe des Varietes.  
Seeing Nana's success, he had set to work to talk enthusiastically 
about her, all the while observing the banker out of the corners of 
his eyes.  He knew him well; twice he had helped him to deceive Rose 
and then, the caprice being over, had brought him back to her, 
faithful and repentant.  In the cafe the too numerous crowd of 
customers were squeezing themselves round the marble-topped tables.  
Several were standing up, drinking in a great hurry.  The tall 
mirrors reflected this thronging world of heads to infinity and 
magnified the narrow room beyond measure with its three chandeliers, 
its moleskin-covered seats and its winding staircase draped with 
red.  Steiner went and seated himself at a table in the first 
saloon, which opened full on the boulevard, its doors having been 
removed rather early for the time of year.  As Fauchery and La 
Faloise were passing the banker stopped them.

"Come and take a bock with us, eh?" they said.

But he was too preoccupied by an idea; he wanted to have a bouquet 
thrown to Nana.  At last he called a waiter belonging to the cafe, 
whom he familiarly addressed as Auguste.  Mignon, who was listening, 
looked at him so sharply that he lost countenance and stammered out:

"Two bouquets, Auguste, and deliver them to the attendant.  A 
bouquet for each of these ladies!  Happy thought, eh?"

At the other end of the saloon, her shoulders resting against the 
frame of a mirror, a girl, some eighteen years of age at the 
outside, was leaning motionless in front of her empty glass as 
though she had been benumbed by long and fruitless waiting.  Under 
the natural curls of her beautiful gray-gold hair a virginal face 
looked out at you with velvety eyes, which were at once soft and 
candid.

She wore a dress of faded green silk and a round hat which blows had 
dinted.  The cool air of the night made her look very pale.

"Egad, there's Satin," murmured Fauchery when his eye lit upon her.

La Faloise questioned him.  Oh dear, yes, she was a streetwalker--
she didn't count.  But she was such a scandalous sort that people 
amused themselves by making her talk.  And the journalist, raising 
his voice:

"What are you doing there, Satin?"

"I'm bogging," replied Satin quietly without changing position.

The four men were charmed and fell a-laughing.  Mignon assured them 
that there was no need to hurry; it would take twenty minutes to set 
up the scenery for the third act.  But the two cousins, having drunk 
their beer, wanted to go up into the theater again; the cold was 
making itself felt.  Then Mignon remained alone with Steiner, put 
his elbows on the table and spoke to him at close quarters.

"It's an understood thing, eh?  We are to go to her house, and I'm 
to introduce you.  You know the thing's quite between ourselves--my 
wife needn't know."

Once more in their places, Fauchery and La Faloise noticed a pretty, 
quietly dressed woman in the second tier of boxes.  She was with a 
serious-looking gentleman, a chief clerk at the office of the 
Ministry of the Interior, whom La Faloise knew, having met him at 
the Muffats'.  As to Fauchery, he was under the impression that her 
name was Madame Robert, a lady of honorable repute who had a lover, 
only one, and that always a person of respectability.

But they had to turn round, for Daguenet was smiling at them.  Now 
that Nana had had a success he no longer hid himself: indeed, he had 
just been scoring triumphs in the passages.  By his side was the 
young truant schoolboy, who had not quitted his seat, so stupefying 
was the state of admiration into which Nana had plunged him.  That 
was it, he thought; that was the woman!  And he blushed as he 
thought so and dragged his gloves on and off mechanically.  Then 
since his neighbor had spoken of Nana, he ventured to question him.

"Will you pardon me for asking you, sir, but that lady who is 
acting--do you know her?"

"Yes, I do a little," murmured Daguenet with some surprise and 
hesitation.

"Then you know her address?"

The question, addressed as it was to him, came so abruptly that he 
felt inclined to respond with a box on the ear.

"No," he said in a dry tone of voice.

And with that he turned his back.  The fair lad knew that he had 
just been guilty of some breach of good manners.  He blushed more 
hotly than ever and looked scared.

The traditional three knocks were given, and among the returning 
throng, attendants, laden with pelisses and overcoats, bustled about 
at a great rate in order to put away people's things.  The clappers 
applauded the scenery, which represented a grotto on Mount Etna, 
hollowed out in a silver mine and with sides glittering like new 
money.  In the background Vulcan's forge glowed like a setting star.  
Diana, since the second act, had come to a good understanding with 
the god, who was to pretend that he was on a journey, so as to leave 
the way clear for Venus and Mars.  Then scarcely was Diana alone 
than Venus made her appearance.  A shiver of delight ran round the 
house.  Nana was nude.  With quiet audacity she appeared in her 
nakedness, certain of the sovereign power of her flesh.  Some gauze 
enveloped her, but her rounded shoulders, her Amazonian bosom, her 
wide hips, which swayed to and fro voluptuously, her whole body, in 
fact, could be divined, nay discerned, in all its foamlike whiteness 
of tint beneath the slight fabric she wore.  It was Venus rising 
from the waves with no veil save her tresses.  And when Nana lifted 
her arms the golden hairs in her armpits were observable in the 
glare of the footlights.  There was no applause.  Nobody laughed any 
more.  The men strained forward with serious faces, sharp features, 
mouths irritated and parched.  A wind seemed to have passed, a soft, 
soft wind, laden with a secret menace.  Suddenly in the bouncing 
child the woman stood discovered, a woman full of restless 
suggestion, who brought with her the delirium of sex and opened the 
gates of the unknown world of desire.  Nana was smiling still, but 
her smile was now bitter, as of a devourer of men.

"By God," said Fauchery quite simply to La Faloise.

Mars in the meantime, with his plume of feathers, came hurrying to 
the trysting place and found himself between the two goddesses.  
Then ensued a passage which Prulliere played with great delicacy.  
Petted by Diana, who wanted to make a final attack upon his feelings 
before delivering him up to Vulcan, wheedled by Venus, whom the 
presence of her rival excited, he gave himself up to these tender 
delights with the beatified expression of a man in clover.  Finally 
a grand trio brought the scene to a close, and it was then that an 
attendant appeared in Lucy Stewart's box and threw on the stage two 
immense bouquets of white lilacs.  There was applause; Nana and Rose 
Mignon bowed, while Prulliere picked up the bouquets.  Many of the 
occupants of the stalls turned smilingly toward the ground-floor 
occupied by Steiner and Mignon.  The banker, his face blood-red, was 
suffering from little convulsive twitchings of the chin, as though 
he had a stoppage in his throat.

What followed took the house by storm completely.  Diana had gone 
off in a rage, and directly afterward, Venus, sitting on a moss-clad 
seat, called Mars to her.  Never yet had a more glowing scene of 
seduction been ventured on.  Nana, her arms round Prulliere's neck, 
was drawing him toward her when Fontan, with comically furious 
mimicry and an exaggerated imitation of the face of an outraged 
husband who surprises his wife in FLAGRANTE DELICTO, appeared at the 
back of the grotto.  He was holding the famous net with iron meshes.  
For an instant he poised and swung it, as a fisherman does when he 
is going to make a cast, and by an ingenious twist Venus and Mars 
were caught in the snare; the net wrapped itself round them and held 
them motionless in the attitude of happy lovers.

A murmur of applause swelled and swelled like a growing sigh.  There 
was some hand clapping, and every opera glass was fixed on Venus.  
Little by little Nana had taken possession of the public, and now 
every man was her slave.

A wave of lust had flowed from her as from an excited animal, and 
its influence had spread and spread and spread till the whole house 
was possessed by it.  At that moment her slightest movement blew the 
flame of desire: with her little finger she ruled men's flesh.  
Backs were arched and quivered as though unseen violin bows had been 
drawn across their muscles; upon men's shoulders appeared fugitive 
hairs, which flew in air, blown by warm and wandering breaths, 
breathed one knew not from what feminine mouth.  In front of him 
Fauchery saw the truant schoolboy half lifted from his seat by 
passion.  Curiosity led him to look at the Count de Vandeuvres--he 
was extremely pale, and his lips looked pinched--at fat Steiner, 
whose face was purple to the verge of apoplexy; at Labordette, 
ogling away with the highly astonished air of a horse dealer 
admiring a perfectly shaped mare; at Daguenet, whose ears were 
blood-red and twitching with enjoyment.  Then a sudden idea made him 
glance behind, and he marveled at what he saw in the Muffats' box.  
Behind the countess, who was white and serious as usual, the count 
was sitting straight upright, with mouth agape and face mottled with 
red, while close by him, in the shadow, the restless eyes of the 
Marquis de Chouard had become catlike phosphorescent, full of golden 
sparkles.  The house was suffocating; people's very hair grew heavy 
on their perspiring heads.  For three hours back the breath of the 
multitude had filled and heated the atmosphere with a scent of 
crowded humanity.  Under the swaying glare of the gas the dust 
clouds in mid-air had grown constantly denser as they hung 
motionless beneath the chandelier.  The whole house seemed to be 
oscillating, to be lapsing toward dizziness in its fatigue and 
excitement, full, as it was, of those drowsy midnight desires which 
flutter in the recesses of the bed of passion.  And Nana, in front 
of this languorous public, these fifteen hundred human beings 
thronged and smothered in the exhaustion and nervous exasperation 
which belong to the close of a spectacle, Nana still triumphed by 
right of her marble flesh and that sexual nature of hers, which was 
strong enough to destroy the whole crowd of her adorers and yet 
sustain no injury.

The piece drew to a close.  In answer to Vulcan's triumphant summons 
all the Olympians defiled before the lovers with ohs and ahs of 
stupefaction and gaiety.  Jupiter said, "I think it is light conduct 
on your part, my son, to summon us to see such a sight as this."  
Then a reaction took place in favor of Venus.  The chorus of 
cuckolds was again ushered in by Iris and besought the master of the 
gods not to give effect to its petition, for since women had lived 
at home, domestic life was becoming impossible for the men: the 
latter preferred being deceived and happy.  That was the moral of 
the play.  Then Venus was set at liberty, and Vulcan obtained a 
partial divorce from her.  Mars was reconciled with Diana, and Jove, 
for the sake of domestic peace, packed his little laundress off into 
a constellation.  And finally they extricated Love from his black 
hole, where instead of conjugating the verb AMO he had been busy in 
the manufacture of "dollies."  The curtain fell on an apotheosis, 
wherein the cuckolds' chorus knelt and sang a hymn of gratitude to 
Venus, who stood there with smiling lips, her stature enhanced by 
her sovereign nudity.

The audience, already on their feet, were making for the exits.  The 
authors were mentioned, and amid a thunder of applause there were 
two calls before the curtain.  The shout of "Nana! Nana!" rang 
wildly forth.  Then no sooner was the house empty than it grew dark: 
the footlights went out; the chandelier was turned down; long strips 
of gray canvas slipped from the stage boxes and swathed the gilt 
ornamentation of the galleries, and the house, lately so full of 
heat and noise, lapsed suddenly into a heavy sleep, while a musty, 
dusty odor began to pervade it.  In the front of her box stood the 
Countess Muffat.  Very erect and closely wrapped up in her furs, she 
stared at the gathering shadows and waited for the crowd to pass 
away.

In the passages the people were jostling the attendants, who hardly 
knew what to do among the tumbled heaps of outdoor raiment.  
Fauchery and La Faloise had hurried in order to see the crowd pass 
out.  All along the entrance hall men formed a living hedge, while 
down the double staircase came slowly and in regular, complete 
formation two interminable throngs of human beings.  Steiner, in tow 
of Mignon, had left the house among the foremost.  The Count de 
Vandeuvres took his departure with Blanche de Sivry on his arm.  For 
a moment or two Gaga and her daughter seemed doubtful how to 
proceed, but Labordette made haste to go and fetch them a 
conveyance, the door whereof he gallantly shut after them.  Nobody 
saw Daguenet go by.  As the truant schoolboy, registering a mental 
vow to wait at the stage door, was running with burning cheeks 
toward the Passage des Panoramas, of which he found the gate closed, 
Satin, standing on the edge of the pavement, moved forward and 
brushed him with her skirts, but he in his despair gave her a savage 
refusal and vanished amid the crowd, tears of impotent desire in his 
eyes.  Members of the audience were lighting their cigars and 
walking off, humming:

     When Venus roams at eventide.

Satin had gone back in front of the Cafe des Varietes, where Auguste 
let her eat the sugar that remained over from the customers' orders.  
A stout man, who came out in a very heated condition, finally 
carried her off in the shadow of the boulevard, which was now 
gradually going to sleep.

Still people kept coming downstairs.  La Faloise was waiting for 
Clarisse; Fauchery had promised to catch up Lucy Stewart with 
Caroline Hequet and her mother.  They came; they took up a whole 
corner of the entrance hall and were laughing very loudly when the 
Muffats passed by them with an icy expression.  Bordenave had just 
then opened a little door and, peeping out, had obtained from 
Fauchery the formal promise of an article.  He was dripping with 
perspiration, his face blazed, as though he were drunk with success.

"You're good for two hundred nights," La Faloise said to him with 
civility.  "The whole of Paris will visit your theater."

But Bordenave grew annoyed and, indicating with a jerk of his chin 
the public who filled the entrance hall--a herd of men with parched 
lips and ardent eyes, still burning with the enjoyment of Nana--he 
cried out violently:

"Say 'my brothel,' you obstinate devil!"



CHAPTER II


At ten o'clock the next morning Nana was still asleep.  She occupied 
the second floor of a large new house in the Boulevard Haussmann, 
the landlord of which let flats to single ladies in order by their 
means to dry the paint.  A rich merchant from Moscow, who had come 
to pass a winter in Paris, had installed her there after paying six 
months' rent in advance.  The rooms were too big for her and had 
never been completely furnished.  The vulgar sumptuosity of gilded 
consoles and gilded chairs formed a crude contrast therein to the 
bric-a-brac of a secondhand furniture shop--to mahogany round 
tables, that is to say, and zinc candelabras, which sought to 
imitate Florentine bronze.  All of which smacked of the courtesan 
too early deserted by her first serious protector and fallen back on 
shabby lovers, of a precarious first appearance of a bad start, 
handicapped by refusals of credit and threats of eviction.

Nana was sleeping on her face, hugging in her bare arms a pillow in 
which she was burying cheeks grown pale in sleep.  The bedroom and 
the dressing room were the only two apartments which had been 
properly furnished by a neighboring upholsterer.  A ray of light, 
gliding in under a curtain, rendered visible rosewood furniture and 
hangings and chairbacks of figured damask with a pattern of big blue 
flowers on a gray ground.  But in the soft atmosphere of that 
slumbering chamber Nana suddenly awoke with a start, as though 
surprised to find an empty place at her side.  She looked at the 
other pillow lying next to hers; there was the dint of a human head 
among its flounces: it was still warm.  And groping with one hand, 
she pressed the knob of an electric bell by her bed's head.

"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!"

"Madame did not warn me; I couldn't be aware of it," murmured Zoe.  
"When Madame changes her days she will do well to tell me so that I 
may know.  Then the old miser is no longer due on the Tuesday?"

Between themselves they were wont thus gravely to nickname as "old 
miser" and "nigger" their two paying visitors, one of whom was a 
tradesman of economical tendencies from the Faubourg Saint-Denis, 
while the other was a Walachian, a mock count, whose money, paid 
always at the most irregular intervals, never looked as though it 
had been honestly come by.  Daguenet had made Nana give him the days 
subsequent to the old miser's visits, and as the trader had to be at 
home by eight o'clock in the morning, the young man would watch for 
his departure from Zoes kitchen and would take his place, which was 
still quite warm, till ten o'clock.  Then he, too, would go about 
his business.  Nana and he were wont to think it a very comfortable 
arrangement.

"So much the worse," said Nana; "I'll write to him this afternoon.  
And if he doesn't receive my letter, then tomorrow you will stop him 
coming in."

In the meantime Zoe was walking softly about the room.  She spoke of 
yesterday's great hit.  Madame had shown such talent; she sang so 
well!  Ah! Madame need not fret at all now!

Nana, her elbow dug into her pillow, only tossed her head in reply.  
Her nightdress had slipped down on her shoulders, and her hair, 
unfastened and entangled, flowed over them in masses.

"Without doubt," she murmured, becoming thoughtful; "but what's to 
be done to gain time?  I'm going to have all sorts of bothers today.  
Now let's see, has the porter come upstairs yet this morning?"

Then both the women talked together seriously.  Nana owed three 
quarters' rent; the landlord was talking of seizing the furniture.  
Then, too, there was a perfect downpour of creditors; there was a 
livery-stable man, a needlewoman, a ladies' tailor, a charcoal 
dealer and others besides, who came every day and settled themselves 
on a bench in the little hall.  The charcoal dealer especially was a 
dreadful fellow--he shouted on the staircase.  But Nana's greatest 
cause of distress was her little Louis, a child she had given birth 
to when she was sixteen and now left in charge of a nurse in a 
village in the neighborhood of Rambouillet.  This woman was 
clamoring for the sum of three hundred francs before she would 
consent to give the little Louis back to her.  Nana, since her last 
visit to the child, had been seized with a fit of maternal love and 
was desperate at the thought that she could not realize a project, 
which had now become a hobby with her.  This was to pay off the 
nurse and to place the little man with his aunt, Mme Lerat, at the 
Batignolles, whither she could go and see him as often as she liked.

Meanwhile the lady's maid kept hinting that her mistress ought to 
have confided her necessities to the old miser.

"To be sure, I told him everything," cried Nana, "and he told me in 
answer that he had too many big liabilities.  He won't go beyond his 
thousand francs a month.  The nigger's beggared just at present; I 
expect he's lost at play.  As to that poor Mimi, he stands in great 
need of a loan himself; a fall in stocks has cleaned him out--he 
can't even bring me flowers now."

She was speaking of Daguenet.  In the self-abandonment of her 
awakening she had no secrets from Zoe, and the latter, inured to 
such confidences, received them with respeciful sympathy.  Since 
Madame condescended to speak to her of her affairs she would permit 
herself to say what she thought.  Besides, she was very fond of 
Madame; she had left Mme Blanche for the express purpose of taking 
service with her, and heaven knew Mme Blanche was straining every 
nerve to have her again!  Situations weren't lacking; she was pretty 
well known, but she would have stayed with Madame even in narrow 
circumstances, because she believed in Madame's future.  And she 
concluded by stating her advice with precision.  When one was young 
one often did silly things.  But this time it was one's duty to look 
alive, for the men only thought of having their fun.  Oh dear, yes!  
Things would right themselves.  Madame had only to say one word in 
order to quiet her creditors and find the money she stood in need 
of.

"All that doesn't help me to three hundred francs," Nana kept 
repeating as she plunged her fingers into the vagrant convolutions 
of her back hair.  "I must have three hundred francs today, at once!  
It's stupid not to know anyone who'll give you three hundred 
francs."

She racked her brains.  She would have sent Mme Lerat, whom she was 
expecting that very morning, to Rambouillet.  The counteraction of 
her sudden fancy spoiled for her the triumph of last night.  Among 
all those men who had cheered her, to think that there wasn't one to 
bring her fifteen louis!  And then one couldn't accept money in that 
way!  Dear heaven, how unfortunate she was!  And she kept harking 
back again to the subject of her baby--he had blue eyes like a 
cherub's; he could lisp "Mamma" in such a funny voice that you were 
ready to die of laughing!

But at this moment the electric bell at the outer door was heard to 
ring with its quick and tremulous vibration.  Zoe returned, 
murmuring with a confidential air:

"It's a woman."

She had seen this woman a score of times, only she made believe 
never to recognize her and to be quite ignorant of the nature of her 
relations with ladies in difficulties.

"She has told me her name--Madame Tricon."

"The Tricon," cried Nana.  "Dear me!  That's true.  I'd forgotten 
her.  Show her in."

Zoe ushered in a tall old lady who wore ringlets and looked like a 
countess who haunts lawyers' offices.  Then she effaced herself, 
disappearing noiselessly with the lithe, serpentine movement 
wherewith she was wont to withdraw from a room on the arrival of a 
gentleman.  However, she might have stayed.  The Tricon did not even 
sit down.  Only a brief exchange of words took place.

"I have someone for you today.  Do you care about it?"

"Yes.  How much?"

"Twenty louis."

"At what o'clock?"

"At three.  It's settled then?"

"It's settled."

Straightway the Tricon talked of the state of the weather.  It was 
dry weather, pleasant for walking.  She had still four or five 
persons to see.  And she took her departure after consulting a small 
memorandum book.  When she was once more alone Nana appeared 
comforted.  A slight shiver agitated her shoulders, and she wrapped 
herself softly up again in her warm bedclothes with the lazy 
movements of a cat who is susceptible to cold.  Little by little her 
eyes closed, and she lay smiling at the thought of dressing Louiset 
prettily on the following day, while in the slumber into which she 
once more sank last night's long, feverish dream of endlessly 
rolling applause returned like a sustained accompaniment to music 
and gently soothed her lassitude.

At eleven o'clock, when Zoe showed Mme Lerat into the room, Nana was 
still asleep.  But she woke at the noise and cried out at once:

"It's you.  You'll go to Rambouillet today?"

"That's what I've come for," said the aunt.  "There's a train at 
twenty past twelve.  I've got time to catch it."

"No, I shall only have the money by and by," replied the young 
woman, stretching herself and throwing out her bosom.  "You'll have 
lunch, and then we'll see."

Zoe brought a dressing jacket.

"The hairdresser's here, madame," she murmured.

But Nana did not wish to go into the dressing room.  And she herself 
cried out:

"Come in, Francis."

A well-dressed man pushed open the door and bowed.  Just at that 
moment Nana was getting out of bed, her bare legs in full view.  But 
she did not hurry and stretched her hands out so as to let Zoe draw 
on the sleeves of the dressing jacket.  Francis, on his part, was 
quite at his ease and without turning away waited with a sober 
expression on his face.

"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.

"Excellent!" Francis kept repeating.

Nana laughed good-humoredly at his chaffing her about her voice!  He 
was a nice fellow, was that Fauchery, and she would repay him for 
his charming style of writing.  Mme Lerat, after having reread the 
notice, roundly declared that the men all had the devil in their 
shanks, and she refused to explain her self further, being fully 
satisfied with a brisk allusion of which she alone knew the meaning her in an income of six hundred
francs a year.  Nana 
promised to rent some pretty little lodgings for her and to give her 
a hundred francs a month besides.  At the mention of this sum the 
aunt forgot herself and shrieked to her niece, bidding her squeeze 
their throats, since she had them in her grasp.  She was meaning the 
men, of course.  Then they both embraced again, but i.  
Francis finished turning up and fastening Nana's hair.  He bowed and 
said:

"I'll keep my eye on the evening papers.  At half-past five as 
usual, eh?"

"Bring me a pot of pomade and a pound of burnt almonds from 
Boissier's," Nana cried to him across the drawing room just as he 
was shutting the door after him.

Then the two women, once more alone, recollected that they had not 
embraced, and they planted big kisses on each other's cheeks.  The 
notice warmed their hearts.  Nana, who up till now had been half 
asleep, was again seized with the fever of her triumph.  Dear, dear, 
'twas Rose Mignon that would be spending a pleasant morning!  Her 
aunt having been unwilling to go to the theater because, as she 
averred, sudden emotions ruined her stomach, Nana set herself to 
describe the events of the evening and grew intoxicated at her own 
recital, as though all Paris had been shaken to the ground by the 
applause.  Then suddenly interrupting herself, she asked with a 
laugh if one would ever have imagined it all when she used to go 
traipsing about the Rue de la Goutte-d'Or.  Mme Lerat shook her 
head.  No, no, one never could have foreseen it!  And she began 
talking in her turn, assuming a serious air as she did so and 
calling Nana "daughter."  Wasn't she a second mother to her since 
the first had gone to rejoin Papa and Grandmamma?  Nana was greatly 
softened and on the verge of tears.  But Mme Lerat declared that the 
past was the past--oh yes, to be sure, a dirty past with things in 
it which it was as well not to stir up every day.  She had left off 
seeing her niece for a long time because among the family she was 
accused of ruining herself along with the little thing.  Good God, 
as though that were possible!  She didn't ask for confidences; she 
believed that Nana had always lived decently, and now it was enough 
for her to have found her again in a fine position and to observe 
her kind feelings toward her son.  Virtue and hard work were still 
the only things worth anything in this world.

"Who is the baby's father?" she said, interrupting herself, her eyes 
lit up with an exhad crossed two knives on the 
table in front of her.  Notwithstanding this, the young woman 
defended herself from the charge of superstition.  Thus, if the salt 
were upset, it meant nothing, even on a Friday; but when it came to 
knives, that was too much of a good thing; that had never proved 
fallacious.  There could be no doubt that something unpleasant was 
going to happen to her.  She yawned, and then with an air, of 
profound boredom:

"Two o'clock already.  I must go out.  What a nuisance!"

The two old ladies looked at one another.  The three women shook 
their heads without speaking.  To be sure, life was not always 
amusing.  Nana had tilted her chair back anew and lit a cigarette, 
while the others sat pursing up their lips discreetly, thinking 
deeply philosophic thoughts.

"While waiting for you to return we'll play a game of bezique," said 
Mme Maloir after a short silence.  "Does Madame play bezique?"

Certainly Mme Lerat played it, and that to perfection.  It was no 
good troubling Zoe, who had vanished--a corner of the table would do 
quite well.  And they pushepression of acute curiosity.

Nana was taken by surprise and hesitated a moment.

"A gentleman," she replied.

"There now!" rejoined the aunt.  "They declared that you had him by 
a stonemason who was in the habit of beating you.  Indeed, you shall 
tell me all about it someday; you know I'm discreet!  Tut, tut, I'll 
look after him as though he were a prince's son."

She had retired from business as a florist and was living on her 
savings, which she had got together sou by sou, till now they 
broughtn the midst of 
her rejoicing Nana's face, as she led the talk back to the subject 
of Louiset, seemed to be overshadowed by a sudden recollection.

"Isn't it a bore I've got to go out at three o'clock?" she muttered.  
"It IS a nuisance!"

Just then Zoe came in to say that lunch was on the table.  They went 
into the dining room, where an old lady was already seated at table.  
She had not taken her hat off, and she wore a dark dress of an 
indecisive color midway between puce and goose dripping.  Nana did 
not seem surprised at sight of her.  She simply asked her why she 
hadn't come into the bedroom.

"I heard voices," replied the old lady.  "I thought you had 
company."

Mme Maloir, a respectable-looking and mannerly woman, was Nana's old 
friend, chaperon and companion.  Mme Lerat's presence seemed to 
fidget her at first.  Afterward, when she became aware that it was 
Nana's aunt, she looked at her with a sweet expression and a die-
away smile.  In the meantime Nana, who averred that she was as 
hungry as a wolf, threw herself on the radishes and gobbled them up 
without bread.  Mme Lerat had become ceremonious; she refused the 
radishes as provocative of phlegm.  By and by when Zoe had brought 
in the cutlets Nana just chipped the meat and contented herself with 
sucking the bones.  Now and again she scrutinized her old friend's 
hat out of the corners of her eyes.

"It's the new hat I gave you?" she ended by saying.

"Yes, I made it up," murmured Mme Maloir, her mouth full of meat.

The hat was smart to distraction.  In front it was greatly 
exaggerated, and it was adorned with a lofty feather.  Mme Maloir 
had a mania for doing up all her hats afresh; she alone knew what 
really became her, and with a few stitches she could manufacture a 
toque out of the most elegant headgear.  Nana, who had bought her 
this very hat in order not to be ashamed of her when in her company 
out of doors, was very near being vexed.

"Push it up, at any rate," she cried.

"No, thank you," replied the old lady with dignity.  "It doesn't get 
in my way; I can eat very comfortably as it is."

After the cutlets came cauliflowers and the remains of a cold 
chicken.  But at the arrival of each successive dish Nana made a 
little face, hesitated, sniffed and left her plateful untouched.  
She finished her lunch with the help of preserve.

Dessert took a long time.  Zoe did not remove the cloth before 
serving the coffee.  Indeed, the ladies simply pushed back their 
plates before taking it.  They talked continually of yesterday's 
charming evening.  Nana kept rolling cigarettes, which she smoked, 
swinging up and down on her backward-tilted chair.  And as Zoe had 
remained behind and was lounging idly against the sideboard, it came 
about that the company were favored with her history.  She said she 
was the daughter of a midwife at Bercy who had failed in business.  
First of all she had taken service with a dentist and after that 
with an insurance agent, but neither place suited her, and she 
thereupon enumerated, not without a certain amount of pride, the 
names of the ladies with whom she had served as lady's maid.  Zoe 
spoke of these ladies as one who had had the making of their 
fortunes.  It was very certain that without her more than one would 
have had some queer tales to tell.  Thus one day, when Mme Blanche 
was with M. Octave, in came the old gentleman.  What did Zoe do?  
She made believe to tumble as she crossed the drawing room; the old 
boy rushed up to her assistance, flew to the kitchen to fetch her a 
glass of water, and M. Octave slipped away.

"Oh, she's a good girl, you bet!" said Nana, who was listening to 
her with tender interest and a sort of submissive admiration.

"Now I've had my troubles," began Mme Lerat.  And edging up to Mme 
Maloir, she imparted to her certain confidential confessions.  Both 
ladies took lumps of sugar dipped in cognac and sucked them.  But 
Mme Maloir was wont to listen to other people's secrets without even 
confessing anything concerning herself.  People said that she lived 
on a mysterious allowance in a room whither no one ever penetrated.

All of a sudden Nana grew excited.

"Don't play with the knives, Aunt.  You know it gives me a turn!"

Without thinking about it Mme Lerat d back the tablecloth over the dirty 
plates.  But as Mme Maloir was herself going to take the cards out 
of a drawer in the sideboard, Nana remarked that before she sat down 
to her game it would be very nice of her if she would write her a 
letter.  It bored Nana to write letters; besides, she was not sure 
of her spelling, while her old friend could turn out the most 
feeling epistles.  She ran to fetch some good note paper in her 
bedroom.  An inkstand consisting of a bottle of ink worth about 
three sous stood untidily on one of the pieces of furniture, with a 
pen deep in rust beside it.  The letter was for Daguenet.  Mme 
Maloir herself wrote in her bold English hand, "My darling little 
man," and then she told him not to come tomorrow because "that could 
not be" but hastened to add that "she was with him in thought at 
every moment of the day, whether she were near or far away."

"And I end with 'a thousand kisses,'" she murmured.

Mme Lerat had shown her approval of each phrase with an emphatic 
nod.  Her eyes were sparkling; she loved to find herself in the 
midst of love affairs.  Nay, she was seized with a desire to add 
some words of her own and, assuming a tender look and cooing like a 
dove, she suggested:

"A thousand kisses on thy beautiful eyes."

"That's the thing: 'a thousand kisses on thy beautiful eyes'!"  Nana 
repeated, while the two old ladies assumed a beatified expression.

Zoe was rung for and told to take the letter down to a 
commissionaire.  She had just been talking with the theater 
messenger, who had brought her mistress the day's playbill and 
rehearsal arrangements, which he had forgotten in the morning.  Nana 
had this individual ushered in and got him to take the latter to 
Daguenet on his return.  Then she put questions to him.  Oh yes!  M. 
Bordenave was very pleased; people had already taken seats for a 
week to come; Madame had no idea of the number of people who had 
been asking her address since morning.  When the man had taken his 
departure Nana announced that at most she would only be out half an 
hour.  If there were any visitors Zoe would make them wait.  As she 
spoke the electric bell sounded.  It was a creditor in the shape of 
the man of whom she jobbed her carriages.  He had settled himself on 
the bench in the anteroom, and the fellow was free to twiddle his 
thumbs till night--there wasn't the least hurry now.

"Come, buck up!" said Nana, still torpid with laziness and yawning 
and stretching afresh.  "I ought to be there now!"

Yet she did not budge but kept watching the play of her aunt, who 
had just announced four aces.  Chin on hand, she grew quite 
engrossed in it but gave a violent start on hearing three o'clock 
strike.

"Good God!" she cried roughly.

Then Mme Maloir, who was counting the tricks she had won with her 
tens and aces, said cheeringly to her in her soft voice:

"It would be better, dearie, to give up your expedition at once."

"No, be quick about it," said Mme Lerat, shuffling the cards.  "I 
shall take the half-past four o'clock train if you're back here with 
the money before four o'clock."

"Oh, there'll be no time lost," she murmured.

Ten minutes after Zoe helped her on with a dress and a hat.  It 
didn't matter much if she were badly turned out.  Just as she was 
about to go downstairs there was a new ring at the bell.  This time 
it was the charcoal dealer.  Very well, he might keep the livery-
stable keeper company--it would amuse the fellows.  Only, as she 
dreaded a scene, she crossed the kitchen and made her escape by the 
back stairs.  She often went that way and in return had only to lift 
up her flounces.

"When one is a good mother anything's excusable," said Mme Maloir 
sententiously when left alone with Mme Lerat.

"Four kings," replied this lady, whom the play greatly excited.

And they both plunged into an interminable game.

The table had not been cleared.  The smell of lunch and the 
cigarette smoke filled the room with an ambient, steamy vapor.  The 
two ladies had again set to work dipping lumps of sugar in brandy 
and sucking the same.  For twenty minutes at least they played and 
sucked simultaneously when, the electric bell having rung a third 
time, Zoe bustled into the room and roughly disturbed them, just as 
if they had been her own friends.

"Look here, that's another ring.  You can't stay where you are.  If 
many foiks call I must have the whole flat.  Now off you go, off you 
go!"

Mme Maloir was for finishing the game, but Zoe looked as if she was 
going to pounce down on the cards, and so she decided to carry them 
off without in any way altering their positions, while Mme Lerat 
undertook the removal of the brandy bottle, the glasses and the 
sugar.  Then they both scudded to the kitchen, where they installed 
themselves at the table in an empty space between the dishcloths, 
which were spread out to dry, and the bowl still full of dishwater.

"We said it was three hundred and forty.  It's your turn."

"I play hearts."

When Zoe returned she found them once again absorbed.  After a 
silence, as Mme Lerat was shuffling, Mme Maloir asked who it was.

"Oh, nobody to speak of," replied the servant carelessly; "a slip of 
a lad!  I wanted to send him away again, but he's such a pretty boy 
with never a hair on his chin and blue eyes and a girl's face!  So I 
told him to wait after all.  He's got an enormous bouquet in his 
hand, which he never once consented to put down.  One would like to 
catch him one--a brat like that who ought to be at school still!"

Mme Lerat went to fetch a water bottle to mix herself some brandy 
and water, the lumps of sugar having rendered her thirsty.  Zoe 
muttered something to the effect that she really didn't mind if she 
drank something too.  Her mouth, she averred, was as bitter as gall.

"So you put him--?" continued Mme Maloir.

"Oh yes, I put him in the closet at the end of the room, the little 
unfurnished one.  There's only one of my lady's trunks there and a 
table.  It's there I stow the lubbers."

And she was putting plenty of sugar in her grog when the electric 
bell made her jump.  Oh, drat it all!  Wouldn't they let her have a 
drink in peace?  If they were to have a peal of bells things 
promised well.  Nevertheless, she ran off to open the door.  
Returning presently, she saw Mme Maloir questioning her with a 
glance.

"It's nothing," she said, "only a bouquet."

All three refreshed themselves, nodding to each other in token of 
salutation.  Then while Zoe was at length busy clearing the table, 
bringing the plates out one by one and putting them in the sink, two 
other rings followed close upon one another.  But they weren't 
serious, for while keeping the kitchen informed of what was going on 
she twice repeated her disdainful expression:

"Nothing, only a bouquet."

Notwithstanding which, the old ladies laughed between two of their 
tricks when they heard her describe the looks of the creditors in 
the anteroom after the flowers had arrived.  Madame would find her 
bouquets on her toilet table.  What a pity it was they cost such a 
lot and that you could only get ten sous for them!  Oh dear, yes, 
plenty of money was wasted!

"For my part," said Mme Maloir, "I should be quite content if every 
day of my life I got what the men in Paris had spent on flowers for 
the women."

"Now, you know, you're not hard to please," murmured Mme Lerat.  
"Why, one would have only just enough to buy thread with.  Four 
queens, my dear."

It was ten minutes to four.  Zoe was astonished, could not 
understand why her mistress was out so long.  Ordinarily when Madame 
found herself obliged to go out in the afternoons she got it over in 
double-quick time.  But Mme Maloir declared that one didn't always 
manage things as one wished.  Truly, life was beset with obstacles, 
averred Mme Lerat.  The best course was to wait.  If her niece was 
long in coming it was because her occupations detained her; wasn't 
it so?  Besides, they weren't overworked--it was comfortable in the 
kitchen.  And as hearts were out, Mme Lerat threw down diamonds.

The bell began aga in 
her small gloved hands.

It was too late now--Mme Lerat would not go to Rambouillet till 
tomorrow, and Nana entered into long explanations.

"There's company waiting for you," the lady's maid repeated.

But Nana grew excited again.  The company might wait: she'd go to 
them all in good time when she'd finished.  And as her aunt began 
putting her hand out for the money:

"Ah no!  Not all of it," she said.  "Three hundred francs for the 
nurse, fifty for your journey and expenses, that's three hundred and 
fifty.  Fifty francs I keep."

The big difficulty was how to find change.  There were not ten 
francs in the house.  But they did not even address themselves to 
Mme Maloir who, never having more than a six-sou omnibus fair upon 
her, was listening in quite a disinterested manner.  At length Zoe 
went out of the room, remarking that she would go and looin, and when Zoe reappeared she was burning
with 
excitement.

"My children, it's fat Steiner!" she said in the doorway, lowering 
her voice as she spoke.  "I've put HIM in the little sitting room."

Thereupon Mme Maloir spoke about the banker to Mme Lerat, who knew 
no such gentleman.  Was he getting ready to give Rose Mignon the go-
by?  Zoe shook her head; she knew a thing or two.  But once more she 
had to go and open the door.

"Here's bothers!" she murmured when she came back.  "It's the 
nigger!  'Twasn't any good telling him that my lady's gone out, and 
so he's settled himself in the bedroom.  We only expected him this 
evening."

At a quarter past four Nana was not in yet.  What could she be 
after?  It was silly of her!  Two other bouquets were brought round, 
and Zoe, growing bored looked to see if there were any coffee left.  
Yes, the ladies would willingly finish off the coffee; it would 
waken them up.  Sitting hunched up on their chairs, they were 
beginning to fall asleep through dint of constantly taking their 
cards between their fingers with the accustomed movement.  The half-
hour sounded.  Something must decidedly have happened to Madame.  
And they began whispering to each other.

Suddenly Mme Maloir forgot herself and in a ringing voice announced: 
"I've the five hundred!  Trumps, Major Quint!"

"Oh, do be quiet!" said Zoe angrily.  "What will all those gentlemen 
think?"  And in the silence which ensued and amid the whispered 
muttering of the two old women at strife over their game, the sound 
of rapid footsteps ascended from the back stairs.  It was Nana at 
last.  Before she had opened the door her breathlessness became 
audible.  She bounced abruptly in, looking very red in the face.  
Her skirt, the string of which must have been broken, was trailing 
over the stairs, and her flounces had just been dipped in a puddle 
of something unpleasant which had oozed out on the landing of the 
first floor, where the servant girl was a regular slut.

"Here you are!  It's lucky!" said Mme Lerat, pursing up her lips, 
for she was still vexed at Mme Maloir's "five hundred."  "You may 
flatter yourself at the way you keep folks waiting."

"Madame isn't reasonable; indeed, she isn't!" added Zoe.

Nana was already harassed, and these reproaches exasperated her.  
Was that the way people received her after the worry she had gone 
through?

"Will you blooming well leave me alone, eh?" she cried.

"Hush, ma'am, there are people in there," said the maid.

Then in lower tones the young Woman stuttered breathlessly:

"D'you suppose I've been having a good time?  Why, there was no end 
to it.  I should have liked to see you there!  I was boiling with 
rage!  I felt inclined to smack somebody.  And never a cab to come 
home in!  Luckily it's only a step from here, but never mind that; I 
did just run home."

"You have the money?" asked the aunt.

"Dear, dear!  That question!" rejoined Nana.

She had sat herself down on a chair close up against the stove, for 
her legs had failed her after so much running, and without stopping 
to take breath she drew from behind her stays an envelope in which 
there were four hundred-franc notes.  They were visible through a 
large rent she had torn with savage fingers in order to be sure of 
the contents.  The three women round about her stared fixedly at the 
envelope, a big, crumpled, dirty receptacle, as it lay claspedk in her 
box, and she brought back a hundred francs in hundred-sou pieces.  
They were counted out on a corner of the table, and Mme Lerat took 
her departure at once after having promised to bring Louiset back 
with her the following day.

"You say there's company there?" continued Nana, still sitting on 
the chair and resting herself.

"Yes, madame, three people."

And Zoe mentioned the banker first.  Nana made a face.  Did that man 
Steiner think she was going to let herself be bored because he had 
thrown her a bouquet yesterday evening?

"Besides, I've had enough of it," she declared.  "I shan't receive 
today.  Go and say you don't expect me now."

"Madame will think the matter over; Madame will receive Monsieur 
Steiner," murmured Zoe gravely, without budging from her place.  She 
was annoyed to see her mistress on the verge of committing another 
foolish mistake.

Then she mentioned the Walachian, who ought by now to find time 
hanging heavy on his hands in the bedroom.  Whereupon Nana grew 
furious and more obstinate than ever.  No, she would see nobody, 
nobody!  Who'd sent her such a blooming leech of a man?

"Chuck 'em all out!  I--I'm going to play a game of bezique with 
Madame Maloir.  I prefer doing that."

The bell interrupted her remarks.  That was the last straw.  Another 
of the beggars yet!  She forbade Zoe to go and open the door, but 
the latter had left the kitchen without listening to her, and when 
she reappeared she brought back a couple of cards and said 
authoritatively:

"I told them that Madame was receiving visitors.  The gentlemen are 
in the drawing room."

Nana had sprung up, raging, but the names of the Marquis de Chouard 
and of Count Muffat de Beuville, which were inscribed on the cards, 
calmed her down.  For a moment or two she remained silent.

"Who are they?" she asked at last.  "You know them?"

"I know the old fellow," replied Zoe, discreetly pursing up her 
lips.

And her mistress continuing to question her with her eyes, she added 
simply:

"I've seen him somewhere."

This remark seemed to decide the young woman.  Regretfully she left 
the kitchen, that asylum of steaming warmth, where you could talk 
and take your ease amid the pleasant fumes of the coffeepot which 
was being kept warm over a handful of glowing embers.  She left Mme 
Maloir behind her.  That lady was now busy reading her fortune by 
the cards; she had never yet taken her hat off, but now in order to 
be more at her ease she undid the strings and threw them back over 
her shoulders.

In the dressing room, where Zoe rapidly helped her on with a tea 
gown, Nana revenged herself for the way in which they were all 
boring her by muttering quiet curses upon the male sex.  These big 
words caused the lady's maid not a little distress, for she saw with 
pain that her mistress was not rising superior to her origin as 
quickly as she could have desired.  She even made bold to beg Madame 
to calm herself.

"You bet," was Nana's crude answer; "they're swine; they glory in 
that sort of thing."

Nevertheless, she assumed her princesslike manner, as she was wont 
to call it.  But just when she was turning to go into the drawing 
room Zoe held her back and herself introduced the Marquis de Chouard 
and the Count Muffat into the dressing room.  It was much better so.

"I regret having kept you waiting, gentlemen," said the young woman 
with studied politeness.

The two men bowed and seated themselves.  A blind of embroidered 
tulle kept the little room in twilight.  It was the most elegant 
chamber in the flat, for it was hung with some light-colored fabric 
and contained a cheval glass framed in inlaid wood, a lounge chair 
and some others with arms and blue satin upholsteries.  On the 
toilet table the bouquets--roses, lilacs and hyacinths--appeared 
like a very ruin of flowers.  Their perfume was strong and 
penetrating, while through the dampish air of the place, which was 
full of the spoiled exhalations of the washstand, came occasional 
whiffs of a more pungent scent, the scent of some grains or dry 
patchouli ground to fine powder at the bottom of a cup.  And as she 
gathered herself together and drew up her dressing jacket, which had 
been ill fastened, Nana had all the appearance of having been 
surprised at her toilet: her skin was still damp; she smiled and 
looked quite startled amid her frills and laces.

"Madame, you will pardon our insistence," said the Count Muffat 
gravely.  "We come on a quest.  Monsieur and I are members of the 
Benevolent Organization of the district."

The Marquis de Chouard hastened gallantly to add:

"When we learned that a great artiste lived in this house we 
promised ourselves that we would put the claims of our poor people 
before her in a very special manner.  Talent is never without a 
heart."

Nana pretended to be modest.  She answered them with little 
assenting movements of her head, making rapid reflections at the 
same time.  It must be the old man that had brought the other one: 
he had such wicked eyes.  And yet the other was not to be trusted 
either: the veins near his temples were so queerly puffed up.  He 
might quite well have come by himself.  Ah, now that she thought of 
it, it was this way: the porter had given them her name, and they 
had egged one another on, each with his own ends in view.

"Most certainly, gentlemen, you were quite right to come up," she 
said with a very good grace.

But the electric bell made her tremble again.  Another call, and 
that Zoe always opening the door!  She went on:

"One is only too happy to be able to give."

At bottom she was flattered.

"Ah, madame," rejoined the marquis, "if only you knew about it! 
there's such misery!  Our district has more than three thousand poor 
people in it, and yet it's one of the richest.  You cannot picture 
to yourself anything like the present distress--children with no 
bread, women ill, utterly without assistance, perishing of the 
cold!"

"The poor souls!" cried Nana, very much moved.

Such was her feeling of compassion that tears flooded her fine eyes.  
No longer studying deportment, she leaned forward with a quick 
movement, and under her open dressing jacket her neck became 
visible, while the bent position of her knees served to outline the 
rounded contour of the thigh under the thin fabric of her skirt.  A 
little flush of blood appeared in the marquis's cadaverous cheeks.  
Count Muffat, who was on the point of speaking, lowered his eyes.  
The air of that little room was too hot: it had the close, heavy 
warmth of a greenhouse.  The roses were withering, and intoxicating 
odors floated up from the patchouli in the cup.

"One would like to be very rich on occasions like this," added Nana.  
"Well, well, we each do what we can.  Believe me, gentlemen, if I 
had known--"

She was on the point of being guilty of a silly speech, so melted 
was she at heart.  But she did not end her sentence and for a moment 
was worried at not being able to remember where she had put her 
fifty francs on changing her dress.  But she recollected at last: 
they must be on the corner of her toilet table under an inverted 
pomatum pot.  As she was in the act of rising the bell sounded for 
quite a long time.  Capital!  Another of them still!  It would never 
end.  The count and the marquis had both risen, too, and the ears of 
the latter seemed to be pricked up and, as it were, pointing toward 
the door; doubtless he knew that kind of ring.  Muffat looked at 
him; then they averted their gaze mutually.  They felt awkward and 
once more assumed their frigid bearing, the one looking square-set 
and solid with his thick head of hair, the other drawing back his 
lean shoulders, over which fell his fringe of thin white locks.

"My faith," said Nana, bringing the ten big silver pieces and quite 
determined to laugh about it, "I am going to entrust you with this, 
gentlemen.  It is for the poor."

And the adorable little dimple in her chin became apparent.  She 
assumed her favorite pose, her amiable baby expression, as she held 
the pile of five-franc pieces on her open palm and offered it to the 
men, as though she were saying to them, "Now then, who wants some?"  
The count was the sharper of the two.  He took fifty francs but left 
one piece behind and, in order to gain possession of it, had to pick 
it off the young woman's very skin, a moist, supple skin, the touch 
of which sent a thrill through him.  She was thoroughly merry and 
did not cease laughing.

"Come, gentlemen," she continued.  "Another time I hope to give 
more."

The gentlemen no longer had any pretext for staying, and they bowed 
and went toward the door.  But just as they were about to go out the 
bell rang anew.  The marquis could not conceal a faint smile, while 
a frown made the count look more grave than before.  Nana detained 
them some seconds so as to give Zoe time to find yet another corner 
for the newcomers.  She did not relish meetings at her house.  Only 
this time the whole place must be packed!  She was therefore much 
relieved when she saw the drawing room empty and asked herself 
whether Zoe had really stuffed them into the cupboards.

"Au revoir, gentlemen," she said, pausing on the threshold of the 
drawing room.

It was as though she lapped them in her laughing smile and clear, 
unclouded glance.  The Count Muffat bowed slightly.  Despite his 
great social experience he felt that he had lost his equilibrium.  
He needed air; he was overcome with the dizzy feeling engendered in 
that dressing room with a scent of flowers, with a feminine essence 
which choked him.  And behind his back, the Marquis de Chouard, who 
was sure that he could not be seen, made so bold as to wink at Nana, 
his whole face suddenly altering its expression as he did so, and 
his tongue nigh lolling from his mouth.

When the young woman re-entered the little room, where Zoe was 
awaiting her with letters and visiting cards, she cried out, 
laughing more heartily than ever:

"There are a pair of beggars for you!  Why, they've got away with my 
fifty francs!"

She wasn't vexed.  It struck her as a joke that MEN should have got 
money out of her.  All the same, they were swine, for she hadn't a 
sou left.  But at sight of the cards and the letters her bad temper 
returned.  As to the letters, why, she said "pass" to them.  They 
were from fellows who, after applauding her last night, were now 
making their declarations.  And as to the callers, they might go 
about their business!

Zoe had stowed them all over the place, and she called attention to 
the great capabilities of the flat, every room in which opened on 
the corridor.  That wasn't the case at Mme Blanche's, where people 
had all to go through the drawing room.  Oh yes, Mme Blanche had had 
plenty of bothers over it!

"You will send them all away," continued Nana in pursuance of her 
idea.  "Begin with the nigger."

"Oh, as to him, madame, I gave him his marching orders a while ago," 
said Zoe with a grin.  "He only wanted to tell Madame that he 
couldn't come to-night."

There was vast joy at this announcement, and Nana clapped her hands.  
He wasn't coming, what good luck!  She would be free then!  And she 
emitted sighs of relief, as though she had been let off the most 
abominable of tortures.  Her first thought was for Daguenet.  Poor 
duck, why, she had just written to tell him to wait till Thursday!  
Quick, quick, Mme Maloir should write a second letter!  But Zoe 
announced that Mme Maloir had slipped away unnoticed, according to 
her wont.  Whereupon Nana, after talking of sending someone to him, 
began to hesitate.  She was very tired.  A long night's sleep--oh, 
it would be so jolly!  The thought of such a treat overcame her at 
last.  For once in a way she could allow herself that!

"I shall go to bed when I come back from the theater," she murmured 
greedily, "and you won't wake me before noon."

Then raising her voice:

"Now then, gee up!  Shove the others downstairs!"

Zoe did not move.  She would never have dreamed of giving her 
mistress overt advice, only now she made shift to give Madame the 
benefit of her experience when Madame seemed to be running her hot 
head against a wall.

"Monsieur Steiner as well?" she queried curtly.

"Why, certainly!" replied Nana.  "Before all the rest."

The maid still waited, in order to give her mistress time for 
reflection.  Would not Madame be proud to get such a rich gentleman 
away from her rival Rose Mignon--a man, moreover, who was known in 
all the theaters?

"Now make haste, my dear," rejoined Nana, who perfectly understood 
the situation, "and tell him he pesters me."

But suddenly there was a reversion of feeling.  Tomorrow she might 
want him.  Whereupon she laughed, winked once or twice and with a 
naughty little gesture cried out:

"After all's said and done, if I want him the best way even now is 
to kick him out of doors."

Zoe seemed much impressed.  Struck with a sudden admiration, she 
gazed at her mistress and then went and chucked Steiner out of doors 
without further deliberation.

Meanwhile Nana waited patiently for a second or two in order to give 
her time to sweep the place out, as she phrased it.  No one would 
ever have expected such a siege!  She craned her head into the 
drawing room and found it empty.  The dining room was empty too.  
But as she continued her visitation in a calmer frame of mind, 
feeling certain that nobody remained behind, she opened the door of 
a closet and came suddenly upon a very young man.  He was sitting on 
the top of a trunk, holding a huge bouquet on his knees and looking 
exceedingly quiet and extremely well behaved.

"Goodness gracious me!" she cried.  "There's one of 'em in there 
even now!"  The very young man had jumped down at sight of her and 
was blushing as red as a poppy.  He did not know what to do with his 
bouquet, which he kept shifting from one hand to the other, while 
his looks betrayed the extreme of emotion.  His youth, his 
embarrassment and the funny figure he cut in his struggles with his 
flowers melted Nana's heart, and she burst into a pretty peal of 
laughter.  Well, now, the very children were coming, were they?  Men 
were arriving in long clothes.  So she gave up all airs and graces, 
became familiar and maternal, tapped her leg and asked for fun:

"You want me to wipe your nose; do you, baby?"

"Yes," replied the lad in a low, supplicating tone.

This answer made her merrier than ever.  He was seventeen years old, 
he said.  His name was Georges Hugon.  He was at the Varietes last 
night and now he had come to see her.

"These flowers are for me?"

"Yes."

"Then give 'em to me, booby!"

But as she took the bouquet from him he sprang upon her hands and 
kissed them with all the gluttonous eagerness peculiar to his 
charming time of life.  She had to beat him to make him let go.  
There was a dreadful little dribbling customer for you!  But as she 
scolded him she flushed rosy-red and began smiling.  And with that 
she sent him about his business, telling him that he might call 
again.  He staggered away; he could not find the doors.

Nana went back into her dressing room, where Francis made his 
appearance almost simultaneously in order to dress her hair for the 
evening.  Seated in front of her mirror and bending her head beneath 
the hairdresser's nimble hands, she stayed silently meditative.  
Presently, however, Zoe entered, remarking:

"There's one of them, madame, who refuses to go."

"Very well, he must be left alone," she answered quietly.

"If that comes to that they still keep arriving."

"Bah!  Tell 'em to wait.  When they begin to feel too hungry they'll 
be off."  Her humor had changed, and she was now delighted to make 
people wait about for nothing.  A happy thought struck her as very 
amusing; she escaped from beneath Francis' hands and ran and bolted 
the doors.  They might now crowd in there as much as they liked; 
they would probably refrain from making a hole through the wall.  
Zoe could come in and out through the little doorway leading to the 
kitchen.  However, the electric bell rang more lustily than ever.  
Every five minutes a clear, lively little ting-ting recurred as 
regularly as if it had been produced by some well-adjusted piece of 
mechanism.  And Nana counted these rings to while the time away 
withal.  But suddenly she remembered something.

"I say, where are my burnt almonds?"

Francis, too, was forgetting about the burnt almonds.  But now he 
drew a paper bag from one of the pockets of his frock coat and 
presented it to her with the discreet gesture of a man who is 
offering a lady a present.  Nevertheless, whenever his accounts came 
to be settled, he always put the burnt almonds down on his bill.  
Nana put the bag between her knees and set to work munching her 
sweetmeats, turning her head from time to time under the 
hairdresser's gently compelling touch.

"The deuce," she murmured after a silence, "there's a troop for 
you!"

Thrice, in quick succession, the bell had sounded.  Its summonses 
became fast and furious.  There were modest tintinnabulations which 
seemed to stutter and tremble like a first avowal; there were bold 
rings which vibrated under some rough touch and hasty rings which 
sounded through the house with shivering rapidity.  It was a regular 
peal, as Zoe said, a peal loud enough to upset the neighborhood, 
seeing that a whole mob of men were jabbing at the ivory button, one 
after the other.  That old joker Bordenave had really been far too 
lavish with her address.  Why, the whole of yesterday's house was 
coming!

"By the by, Francis, have you five louis?" said Nana.

He drew back, looked carefully at her headdress and then quietly 
remarked:

"Five louis, that's according!"

"Ah, you know if you want securities. . ." she continued.

And without finishing her sentence, she indicated the adjoining 
rooms with a sweeping gesture.  Francis lent the five louis.  Zoe, 
during each momentary respite, kept coming in to get Madame's things 
ready.  Soon she came to dress her while the hairdresser lingered 
with the intention of giving some finishing touches to the 
headdress.  But the bell kept continually disturbing the lady's 
maid, who left Madame with her stays half laced and only one shoe 
on.  Despite her long experience, the maid was losing her head.  
After bringing every nook and corner into requisition and putting 
men pretty well everywhere, she had been driven to stow them away in 
threes and fours, which was a course of procedure entirely opposed 
to her principles.  So much the worse for them if they ate each 
other up!  It would afford more room!  And Nana, sheltering behind 
her carefully bolted door, began laughing at them, declaring that 
she could hear them pant.  They ought to be looking lovely in there 
with their tongues hanging out like a lot of bowwows sitting round 
on their behinds.  Yesterday's success was not yet over, and this 
pack of men had followed up her scent.

"Provided they don't break anything," she murmured.

She began to feel some anxiety, for she fancied she felt their hot 
breath coming through chinks in the door.  But Zoe ushered 
Labordette in, and the young woman gave a little shout of relief.  
He was anxious to tell her about an account he had settled for her 
at the justice of peace's court.  But she did not attend and said:

"I'll take you along with me.  We'll have dinner together, and 
afterward you shall escort me to the Varietes.  I don't go on before 
half-past nine."

Good old Labordette, how lucky it was he had come!  He was a fellow 
who never asked for any favors.  He was only the friend of the 
women, whose little bits of business he arranged for them.  Thus on 
his way in he had dismissed the creditors in the anteroom.  Indeed, 
those good folks really didn't want to be paid.  On the contrary, if 
they HAD been pressing for payment it was only for the sake of 
complimenting Madame and of personally renewing their offers of 
service after her grand success of yesterday.

"Let's be off, let's be off," said Nana, who was dressed by now.

But at that moment Zoe came in again, shouting:

"I refuse to open the door any more.  They're waiting in a crowd all 
down the stairs."

A crowd all down the stairs!  Francis himself, despite the English 
stolidity of manner which he was wont to affect, began laughing as 
he put up his combs.  Nana, who had already taken Labordette's arm, 
pushed him into the kitchen and effected her escape.  At last she 
was delivered from the men and felt happily conscious that she might 
now enjoy his society anywhere without fear of stupid interruptions.

"You shall see me back to my door," she said as they went down the 
kitchen stairs.  "I shall feel safe, in that case.  Just fancy, I 
want to sleep a whole night quite by myself--yes, a whole night!  
It's sort of infatuation, dear boy!"



CHAPTER III


The countess Sabine, as it had become customary to call Mme Muffat 
de Beuville in order to distinguish her from the count's mother, who 
had died the year before, was wont to receive every Tuesday in her 
house in the Rue Miromesnil at the corner of the Rue de Pentievre.  
It was a great square building, and the Muffats had lived in it for 
a hundred years or more.  On the side of the street its frontage 
seemed to slumber, so lofty was it and dark, so sad and conventlike, 
with its great outer shutters, which were nearly always closed.  And 
at the back in a little dark garden some trees had grown up and were 
straining toward the sunlight with such long slender branches that 
their tips were visible above the roof.

This particular Tuesday, toward ten o'clock in the evening, there 
were scarcely a dozen people in the drawing room.  When she was only 
expecting intimate friends the countess opened neither the little 
drawing room nor the dining room.  One felt more at home on such 
occasions and chatted round the fire.  The drawing room was very 
large and very lofty; its four windows looked out upon the garden, 
from which, on this rainy evening of the close of April, issued a 
sensation of damp despite the great logs burning on the hearth.  The 
sun never shone down into the room; in the daytime it was dimly lit 
up by a faint greenish light, but at night, when the lamps and the 
chandelier were burning, it looked merely a serious old chamber with 
its massive mahogany First Empire furniture, its hangings and chair 
coverings of yellow velvet, stamped with a large design.  Entering 
it, one was in an atmosphere of cold dignity, of ancient manners, of 
a vanished age, the air of which seemed devotional.

Opposite the armchair, however, in which the count's mother had 
died--a square armchair of formal design and inhospitable padding, 
which stood by the hearthside--the Countess Sabine was seated in a 
deep and cozy lounge, the red silk upholsteries of which were soft 
as eider down.  It was the only piece of modern furniture there, a 
fanciful item introduced amid the prevailing severity and clashing 
with it.

"So we shall have the shah of Persia," the young woman was saying.

They were talking of the crowned heads who were coming to Paris for 
the exhibition.  Several ladies had formed a circle round the 
hearth, and Mme du Joncquoy, whose brother, a diplomat, had just 
fulfilled a mission in the East, was giving some details about the 
court of Nazr-ed-Din.

"Are you out of sorts, my dear?" asked Mme Chantereau, the wife of 
an ironmaster, seeing the countess shivering slightly and growing 
pale as she did so.

"Oh no, not at all," replied the latter, smiling.  "I felt a little 
cold.  This drawing room takes so long to warm."

And with that she raised her melancholy eyes and scanned the walls 
from floor to ceiling.  Her daughter Estelle, a slight, insignificant-
looking girl of sixteen, the thankless period of life, quitted 
the large footstool on which she was sitting and silently came 
and propped up one of the logs which had rolled from its place.  
But Mme de Chezelles, a convent friend of Sabine's and her junior by 
five years, exclaimed:

"Dear me, I would gladly be possessed of a drawing room such as 
yours!  At any rate, you are able to receive visitors.  They only 
build boxes nowadays.  Oh, if I were in your place!"

She ran giddily on and with lively gestures explained how she would 
alter the hangings, the seats--everything, in fact.  Then she would 
give balls to which all Paris should run.  Behind her seat her 
husband, a magistrate, stood listening with serious air.  It was 
rumored that she deceived him quite openly, but people pardoned her 
offense and received her just the same, because, they said, "she's 
not answerable for her actions."

"Oh that Leonide!" the Countess Sabine contented herself by 
murmuring, smiling her faint smile the while.

With a languid movement she eked out the thought that was in her.  
After having lived there seventeen years she certainly would not 
alter her drawing room now.  It would henceforth remain just such as 
her mother-in-law had wished to preserve it during her lifetime.  
Then returning to the subject of conversation:

"I have been assured," she said, "that we shall also have the king 
of Prussia and the emperor of Russia."

'Yes, some very fine fetes are promised," said Mme du Joncquoy.

The banker Steiner, not long since introduced into this circle by 
Leonide de Chezelles, who was acquainted with the whole of Parisian 
society, was sitting chatting on a sofa between two of the windows.  
He was questioning a deputy, from whom he was endeavoring with much 
adroitness to elicit news about a movement on the stock exchange of 
which he had his suspicions, while the Count Muffat, standing in 
front of them, was silently listening to their talk, looking, as he 
did so, even grayer than was his wont.

Four or five young men formed another group near the door round the 
Count Xavier de Vandeuvres, who in a low tone was telling them an 
anecdote.  It was doubtless a very risky one, for they were choking 
with laughter.  Companionless in the center of the room, a stout 
man, a chief clerk at the Ministry of the Interior, sat heavily in 
an armchair, dozing with his eyes open.  But when one of the young 
men appeared to doubt the truth of the anecdote Vandeuvres raised 
his voice.

"You are too much of a skeptic, Foucarmont; you'll spoil all your 
pleasures that way."

And he returned to the ladies with a laugh.  Last scion of a great 
family, of feminine manners and witty tongue, he was at that time 
running through a fortune with a rage of life and appetite which 
nothing could appease.  His racing stable, which was one of the best 
known in Paris, cost him a fabulous amount of money; his betting 
losses at the Imperial Club amounted monthly to an alarming number 
of pounds, while taking one year with another, his mistresses would 
be always devouring now a farm, now some acres of arable land or 
forest, which amounted, in fact, to quite a respectable slice of his 
vast estates in Picardy.

"I advise you to call other people skeptics!  Why, you don't believe 
a thing yourself," said Leonide, making shift to find him a little 
space in which to sit down at her side.

"It's you who spoil your own pleasures."

"Exactly," he replied.  "I wish to make others benefit by my 
experience."

But the company imposed silence on him: he was scandalizing M. 
Venot.  And, the ladies having changed their positions, a little old 
man of sixty, with bad teeth and a subtle smile, became visible in 
the depths of an easy chair.  There he sat as comfortably as in his 
own house, listening to everybody's remarks and making none himself.  
With a slight gesture he announced himself by no means scandalized.  
Vandeuvres once more assumed his dignified bearing and added 
gravely:

"Monsieur Venot is fully aware that I believe what it is one's duty 
to believe."

It was an act of faith, and even Leonide appeared satisfied.  The 
young men at the end of the room no longer laughed; the company were 
old fogies, and amusement was not to be found there.  A cold breath 
of wind had passed over them, and amid the ensuing silence Steiner's 
nasal voice became audible.  The deputy's discreet answers were at 
last driving him to desperation.  For a second or two the Countess 
Sabine looked at the fire; then she resumed the conversation.

"I saw the king of Prussia at Baden-Baden last year.  He's still 
full of vigor for his age."

"Count Bismarck is to accompany him," said Mme du Joncquoy.  "Do you 
know the count?  I lunched with him at my brother's ages ago, when 
he was representative of Prussia in Paris.  There's a man now whose 
latest successes I cannot in the least understand."

"But why?" asked Mme Chantereau.

"Good gracious, how am I to explain?  He doesn't please me.  His 
appearance is boorish and underbred.  Besides, so far as I am 
concerned, I find him stupid."

With that the whole room spoke of Count Bismarck, and opinions 
differed considerably.  Vandeuvres knew him and assured the company 
that he was great in his cups and at play.  But when the discussion 
was at its height the door was opened, and Hector de la Falois made 
his appearance.  Fauchery, who followed in his wake, approached the 
countess and, bowing:

"Madame," he said, "I have not forgotten your extremely kind 
invitation."

She smiled and made a pretty little speech.  The journalist, after 
bowing to the count, stood for some moments in the middle of the 
drawing room.  He only recognized Steiner and accordingly looked 
rather out of his element.  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 wanted to escape and return to the ladies in order to urge yet 
another reason in M. de Bismarck's favor.  But Fauchery detained 
him.

"You never will guess whom she has charged me to invite."

And with a slight nod he indicated Count Muffat, who was just then 
discussing a knotty point in the budget with Steiner and the deputy.

"It's impossible," said Vandeuvres, stupefaction and merriment in 
his tones.  "My word on it!  I had to swear that I would bring him 
to her.  Indeed, that's one of my reasons for coming here."

Both laughed silently, and Vandeuvres, hurriedly rejoining the 
circle of ladies, cried out:

"I declare that on the contrary Monsieur de Bismarck is exceedingly 
witty.  For instance, one evening he said a charmingly epigrammatic 
thing in my presence."

La Faloise meanwhile had heard the few rapid sentences thus 
whisperingly interchanged, and he gazed at Fauchery in hopes of an 
explanation which was not vouchsafed him.  Of whom were they 
talking, and what were they going to do at midnight tomorrow?  He 
did not leave his cousin's side again.  The latter had gone and 
seated himself.  He was especially interested by the Countess 
Sabine.  Her name had often been mentioned in his presence, and he 
knew that, having been married at the age of seventeen, she must now 
be thirty-four and that since her marriage she had passed a 
cloistered existence with her husband and her mother-in-law.  In 
society some spoke of her as a woman of religious chastity, while 
others pitied her and recalled to memory her charming bursts of 
laughter and the burning glances of her great eyes in the days prior 
to her imprisonment in this old town house.  Fauchery scrutinized 
her and yet hesitated.  One of his friends, a captain who had 
recently died in Mexico, had, on the very eve of his departure, made 
him one of those gross postprandial confessions, of which even the 
most prudent among men are occasionally guilty.  But of this he only 
retained a vague recollection; they had dined not wisely but too 
well that evening, and when he saw the countess, in her black dress 
and with her quiet smile, seated in that Old World drawing room, he 
certainly had his doubts.  A lamp which had been placed behind her 
threw into clear relief her dark, delicate, plump side face, wherein 
a certain heaviness in the contours of the mouth alone indicated a 
species of imperious sensuality.

"What do they want with their Bismarck?" muttered La Faloise, whose 
constant pretense it was to be bored in good society.  "One's ready 
to kick the bucket here.  A pretty idea of yours it was to want to 
come!"

Fauchery questioned him abruptly.

"Now tell me, does the countess admit someone to her embraces?"

"Oh dear, no, no!  My dear fellow!" he stammered, manifestly taken 
aback and quite forgetting his pose.  "Where d'you think we are?"

After which he was conscious of a want of up-to-dateness in this 
outburst of indignation and, throwing himself back on a great sofa, 
he added:

"Gad!  I say no!  But I don't know much about it.  There's a little 
chap out there, Foucarmont they call him, who's to be met with 
everywhere and at every turn.  One's seen faster men than that, 
though, you bet.  However, it doesn't concern me, and indeed, all I 
know is that if the countess indulges in high jinks she's still 
pretty sly about it, for the thing never gets about--nobody talks."

Then although Fauchery did not take the trouble to question him, he 
told him all he knew about the Muffats.  Amid the conversation of 
the ladies, which still continued in front of the hearth, they both 
spoke in subdued tones, and, seeing them there with their white 
cravats and gloves, one might have supposed them to be discussing in 
chosen phraseology some really serious topic.  Old Mme Muffat then, 
whom La Faloise had been well acquainted with, was an insufferable 
old lady, always hand in glove with the priests.  She had the grand 
manner, besides, and an authoritative way of comporting herself, 
which bent everybody to her will.  As to Muffat, he was an old man's 
child; his father, a general, had been created count by Napoleon I, 
and naturally he had found himself in favor after the second of 
December.  He hadn't much gaiety of manner either, but he passed for 
a very honest man of straightforward intentions and understanding.  
Add to these a code of old aristocratic ideas and such a lofty 
conception of his duties at court, of his dignities and of his 
virtues, that he behaved like a god on wheels.  It was the Mamma 
Muffat who had given him this precious education with its daily 
visits to the confessional, its complete absence of escapades and of 
all that is meant by youth.  He was a practicing Christian and had 
attacks of faith of such fiery violence that they might be likened 
to accesses of burning fever.  Finally, in order to add a last touch 
to the picture, La Faloise whispered something in his cousin's ear.

"You don't say so!" said the latter.

"On my word of honor, they swore it was true!  He was still like 
that when he married."

Fauchery chuckled as he looked at the count, whose face, with its 
fringe of whiskers and absence of mustaches, seemed to have grown 
squarer and harder now that he was busy quoting figures to the 
writhing, struggling Steiner.

"My word, he's got a phiz for it!" murmured Fauchery.  "A pretty 
present he made his wife!  Poor little thing, how he must have bored 
her!  She knows nothing about anything, I'll wager!"

Just then the Countess Sabine was saying something to him.  But he 
did not hear her, so amusing and extraordinary did he esteem the 
Muffats' case.  She repeated the question.

"Monsieur Fauchery, have you not published a sketch of Monsieur de 
Bismarck?  You spoke with him once?"

He got up briskly and approached the circle of ladies, endeavoring 
to collect himself and soon with perfect ease of manner finding an 
answer:

"Dear me, madame, I assure you I wrote that 'portrait' with the help 
of biographies which had been published in Germany.  I have never 
seen Monsieur de Bismarck."

He remained beside the countess and, while talking with her, 
continued his meditations.  She did not look her age; one would have 
set her down as being twenty-eight at most, for her eyes, above all, 
which were filled with the dark blue shadow of her long eyelashes, 
retained the glowing light of youth.  Bred in a divided family, so 
that she used to spend one month with the Marquis de Chouard, 
another with the marquise, she had been married very young, urged 
on, doubtless, by her father, whom she embarrassed after her 
mother's death.  A terrible man was the marquis, a man about whom 
strange tales were beginning to be told, and that despite his lofty 
piety!  Fauchery asked if he should have the honor of meeting him.  
Certainly her father was coming, but only very late; he had so much 
work on hand!  The journalist thought he knew where the old 
gentleman passed his evenings and looked grave.  But a mole, which 
he noticed close to her mouth on the countess's left cheek, 
surprised him.  Nana had precisely the same mole.  It was curious.  
Tiny hairs curled up on it, only they were golden in Nana's case, 
black as jet in this.  Ah well, never mind!  This woman enjoyed 
nobody's embraces.

"I have always felt a wish to know Queen Augusta," she said.  "They 
say she is so good, so devout.  Do you think she will accompany the 
king?"

"It is not thought that she will, madame," he replied.

She had no lovers: the thing was only too apparent.  One had only to 
look at her there by the side of that daughter of hers, sitting so 
insignificant and constrained on her footstool.  That sepulchral 
drawing room of hers, which exhaled odors suggestive of being in a 
church, spoke as plainly as words could of the iron hand, the 
austere mode of existence, that weighed her down.  There was nothing 
suggestive of her own personality in that ancient abode, black with 
the damps of years.  It was Muffat who made himself felt there, who 
dominated his surroundings with his devotional training, his 
penances and his fasts.  But the sight of the little old gentleman 
with the black teeth and subtle smile whom he suddenly discovered in 
his armchair behind the group of ladies afforded him a yet more 
decisive argument.  He knew the personage.  It was Theophile Venot, 
a retired lawyer who had made a specialty of church cases.  He had 
left off practice with a handsome fortune and was now leading a 
sufficiently mysterious existence, for he was received everywhere, 
treated with great deference and even somewhat feared, as though he 
had been the representative of a mighty force, an occult power, 
which was felt to be at his back.  Nevertheless, his behavior was 
very humble.  He was churchwarden at the Madeleine Church and had 
simply accepted the post of deputy mayor at the town house of the 
Ninth Arrondissement in order, as he said, to have something to do 
in his leisure time.  Deuce take it, the countess was well guarded; 
there was nothing to be done in that quarter.

"You're right, it's enough to make one kick the bucket here," said 
Fauchery to his cousin when he had made good his escape from the 
circle of ladies.  "We'll hook it!"

But Steiner, deserted at last by the Count Muffat and the deputy, 
came up in a fury.  Drops of perspiration stood on his forehead, and 
he grumbled huskily:

"Gad!  Let 'em tell me nothing, if nothing they want to tell me.  I 
shall find people who will talk."

Then he pushed the journalist into a corner and, altering his tone, 
said in accents of victory:

"It's tomorrow, eh?  I'm of the party, my bully!"

"Indeed!" muttered Fauchery with some astonishment.

"You didn't know about it.  Oh, I had lots of bother to find her at 
home.  Besides, Mignon never would leave me alone."

"But they're to be there, are the Mignons."

"Yes, she told me so.  In fact, she did receive my visit, and she 
invited me.  Midnight punctually, after the play."

The banker was beaming.  He winked and added with a peculiar 
emphasis on the words:

"You've worked it, eh?"

"Eh, what?" said Fauchery, pretending not to understand him.  "She 
wanted to thank me for my article, so she came and called on me."

"Yes, yes.  You fellows are fortunate.  You get rewarded.  By the 
by, who pays the piper tomorrow?"

The journalist made a slight outward movement with his arms, as 
though he would intimate that no one had ever been able to find out.  
But Vandeuvres called to Steiner, who knew M. de Bismarck.  Mme du 
Joncquoy had almost convinced herself of the truth of her 
suppositions; she concluded with these words:

"He gave me an unpleasant impression.  I think his face is evil.  
But I am quite willing to believe that he has a deal of wit.  It 
would account for his successes."

"Without doubt," said the banker with a faint smile.  He was a Jew 
from Frankfort.

Meanwhile La Faloise at last made bold to question his cousin.  He 
followed him up and got inside his guard:

"There's supper at a woman's tomorrow evening?  With which of them, 
eh?  With which of them?"

Fauchery motioned to him that they were overheard and must respect 
the conventions here.  The door had just been opened anew, and an 
old lady had come in, followed by a young man in whom the journalist 
recognized the truant schoolboy, perpetrator of the famous and as 
yet unforgotten "tres chic" of the Blonde Venus first night.  This 
lady's arrival caused a stir among the company.  The Countess Sabine 
had risen briskly from her seat in order to go and greet her, and 
she had taken both her hands in hers and addressed her as her "dear 
Madame Hugon."  Seeing that his cousin viewed this little episode 
with some curiosity, La Faloise sought to arouse his interest and in 
a few brief phrases explained the position.  Mme Hugon, widow of a 
notary, lived in retirement at Les Fondettes, an old estate of her 
family's in the neighborhood of Orleans, but she also kept up a 
small establishment in Paris in a house belonging to her in the Rue 
de Richelieu and was now passing some weeks there in order to settle 
her youngest son, who was reading the law and in his "first year."  
In old times she had been a dear friend of the Marquise de Chouard 
and had assisted at the birth of the countess, who, prior to her 
marriage, used to stay at her house for months at a time and even 
now was quite familiarly treated by her.

"I have brought Georges to see you," said Mme Hugon to Sabine.  
"He's grown, I trust."

The young man with his clear eyes and the fair curls which suggested 
a girl dressed up as a boy bowed easily to the countess and reminded 
her of a bout of battledore and shuttlecock they had had together 
two years ago at Les Fondettes.

"Philippe is not in Paris?" asked Count Muffat.

"Dear me, no!" replied the old lady.  "He is always in garrison at 
Bourges."  She had seated herself and began talking with 
considerable pride of her eldest son, a great big fellow who, after 
enlisting in a fit of waywardness, had of late very rapidly attained 
the rank of lieutenant.  All the ladies behaved to her with 
respectful sympathy, and conversation was resumed in a tone at once 
more amiable and more refined.  Fauchery, at sight of that 
respectable Mme Hugon, that motherly face lit up with such a kindly 
smile beneath its broad tresses of white hair, thought how foolish 
he had been to suspect the Countess Sabine even for an instant.

Nevertheless, the big chair with the red silk upholsteries in which 
the countess sat had attracted his attention.  Its style struck him 
as crude, not to say fantastically suggestive, in that dim old 
drawing room.  Certainly it was not the count who had inveigled 
thither that nest of voluptuous idleness.  One might have described 
it as an experiment, marking the birth of an appetite and of an 
enjoyment.  Then he forgot where he was, fell into brown study and 
in thought even harked back to that vague confidential announcement 
imparted to him one evening in the dining room of a restaurant.  
Impelled by a sort of sensuous curiosity, he had always wanted an 
introduction into the Muffats' circle, and now that his friend was 
in Mexico through all eternity, who could tell what might happen?  
"We shall see," he thought.  It was a folly, doubtless, but the idea 
kept tormenting him; he felt himself drawn on and his animal nature 
aroused.  The big chair had a rumpled look--its nether cushions had 
been tumbled, a fact which now amused him.

"Well, shall we be off?" asked La Faloise, mentally vowing that once 
outside he would find out the name of the woman with whom people 
were going to sup.

"All in good time," replied Fauchery.

But he was no longer in any hurry and excused himself on the score 
of the invitation he had been commissioned to give and had as yet 
not found a convenient opportunity to mention.  The ladies were 
chatting about an assumption of the veil, a very touching ceremony 
by which the whole of Parisian society had for the last three days 
been greatly moved.  It was the eldest daughter of the Baronne de 
Fougeray, who, under stress of an irresistible vocation, had just 
entered the Carmelite Convent.  Mme Chantereau, a distant cousin of 
the Fougerays, told how the baroness had been obliged to take to her 
bed the day after the ceremony, so overdone was she with weeping.

"I had a very good place," declared Leonide.  "I found it 
interesting."

Nevertheless, Mme Hugon pitied the poor mother.  How sad to lose a 
daughter in such a way!

"I am accused of being overreligious," she said in her quiet, frank 
manner, "but that does not prevent me thinking the children very 
cruel who obstinately commit such suicide."

"Yes, it's a terrible thing," murmured the countess, shivering a 
little, as became a chilly person, and huddling herself anew in the 
depths of her big chair in front of the fire.

Then the ladies fell into a discussion.  But their voices were 
discreetly attuned, while light trills of laughter now and again 
interrupted the gravity of their talk.  The two lamps on the chimney 
piece, which had shades of rose-colored lace, cast a feeble light 
over them while on scattered pieces of furniture there burned but 
three other lamps, so that the great drawing room remained in soft 
shadow.

Steiner was getting bored.  He was describing to Fauchery an 
escapade of that little Mme de Chezelles, whom he simply referred to 
as Leonide.  "A blackguard woman," he said, lowering his voice 
behind the ladies' armchairs.  Fauchery looked at her as she sat 
quaintly perched, in her voluminous ball dress of pale blue satin, 
on the corner of her armchair.  She looked as slight and impudent as 
a boy, and he ended by feeling astonished at seeing her there.  
People comported themselves better at Caroline Hequet's, whose 
mother had arranged her house on serious principles.  Here was a 
perfect subject for an article.  Whuat a strange world was this world 
of Paris!  The most rigid circles found themselves invaded.  
Evidently that silent Theophile Venot, who contented himself by 
smiling and showing his ugly teeth, must have been a legacy from the 
late countess.  So, too, must have been such ladies of mature age as 
Mme Chantereau and Mme du Joncquoy, besides four or five old 
gentlemen who sat motionless in corners.  The Count Muffat attracted 
to the house a series of functionaries, distinguished by the 
immaculate personal appearance which was at that time required of 
the men at the Tuileries.  Among others there was the chief clerk, 
who still sat solitary in the middle of the room with his closely 
shorn cheeks, his vacant glance and his coat so tight of fit that he 
could scarce venture to move.  Almost all the young men and certain 
individuals with distinguished, aristocratic manners were the 
Marquis de Chouard's contribution to the circle, he having kept 
touch with the Legitimist party after making his peace with the 
empire on his entrance into the Council of State.  There remained 
Leonide de Chezelles and Steiner, an ugly little knot against which 
Mme Hugon's elderly and amiable serenity stood out in strange 
contrast.  And Fauchery, having sketched out his article, named this 
last group "Countess Sabine's little clique."

"On another occasion," continued Steiner in still lower tones, 
"Leonide got her tenor down to Montauban.  She was living in the 
Chateau de Beaurecueil, two leagues farther off, and she used to 
come in daily in a carriage and pair in order to visit him at the 
Lion d'Or, where he had put up.  The carriage used to wait at the 
door, and Leonide would stay for hours in the house, while a crowd 
gathered round and looked at the horses."

There was a pause in the talk, and some solemn moments passed 
silently by in the lofty room.  Two young men were whispering, but 
they ceased in their turn, and the hushed step of Count Muffat was 
alone audible as he crossed the floor.  The lamps seemed to have 
paled; the fire was going out; a stern shadow fell athwart the old 
friends of the house where they sat in the chairs they had occupied 
there for forty years back.  It was as though in a momentary pause 
of conversation the invited guests had become suddenly aware that 
the count's mother, in all her glacial stateliness, had returned 
among them.

But the Countess Sabine had once more resumed:

"Well, at last the news of it got about.  The young man was likely 
to die, and that would explain the poor child's adoption of the 
religious life.  Besides, they say that Monsieur de Fougeray wold 
never have given his consent to the marriage."

"They say heaps of other things too," cried Leonide giddily.

She fell a-laughing; she refused to talk.  Sabine was won over by 
this gaiety and put her handkerchief up to her lips.  And in the 
vast and solemn room their laughter sounded a note which struck 
Fauchery strangely, the note of delicate glass breaking.  Assuredly 
here was the first beginning of the "little rift."  Everyone began 
talking again.  Mme du Joncquoy demurred; Mme Chantereau knew for 
certain that a marriage had been projected but that matters had gone 
no further; the men even ventured to give their opinions.  For some 
minutes the conversation was a babel of opinions, in which the 
divers elements of the circle, whether Bonapartist or Legitimist or 
merely worldly and skeptical, appeared to jostle one another 
simultaneously.  Estelle had rung to order wood to be put on the 
fire; the footman turned up the lamps; the room seemed to wake from 
sleep.  Fauchery began smiling, as though once more at his ease.

"Egad, they become the brides of God when they couldn't be their 
cousin's," said Vandeuvres between his teeth.

The subject bored him, and he had rejoined Fauchery.

"My dear fellow, have you ever seen a woman who was really loved 
become a nun?"

He did not wait for an answer, for he had had enough of the topic, 
and in a hushed voice:

"Tell me," he said, "how many of us will there be tomorrow?  
There'll be the Mignons, Steiner, yourself, Blanche and I; who 
else?"

"Caroline, I believe, and Simonne and Gaga without doubt.  One never 
knows exactly, does one?  On such occasions one expects the party 
will number twenty, and you're really thirty."

Vandeuvres, who was looking at the ladies, passed abruptly to 
another subject:

"She must have been very nice-looking, that Du Joncquoy woman, some 
fifteen years ago.  Poor Estelle has grown lankier than ever.  What 
a nice lath to put into a bed!"

But interrupting himself, he returned to the subject of tomorrow's 
supper.

"What's so tiresome of those shows is that it's always the same set 
of women.  One wants a novelty.  Do try and invent a new girl.  By 
Jove, happy thought!  I'll go and beseech that stout man to bring 
the woman he was trotting about the other evening at the Varietes."

He referred to the chief clerk, sound asleep in the middle of the 
drawing room.  Fauchery, afar off, amused himself by following this 
delicate negotiation.  Vandeuvres had sat himself down by the stout 
man, who still looked very sedate.  For some moments they both 
appeared to be discussing with much propriety the question before 
the house, which was, "How can one discover the exact state of 
feeling that urges a young girl to enter into the religious life?"  
Then the count returned with the remark:

"It's impossible.  He swears she's straight.  She'd refuse, and yet 
I would have wagered that I once saw her at Laure's."

"Eh, what?  You go to Laure's?" murmured Fauchery with a chuckle.  
"You venture your reputation in places like that?  I was under the 
impression that it was only we poor devils of outsiders who--"

"Ah, dear boy, one ought to see every side of life."

Then they sneered and with sparkling eyes they compared notes about 
the table d'hote in the Rue des Martyrs, where big Laure Piedefer 
ran a dinner at three francs a head for little women in 
difficulties.  A nice hole, where all the little women used to kiss 
Laure on the lips!  And as the Countess Sabine, who had overheard a 
stray word or two, turned toward them, they started back, rubbing 
shoulders in excited merriment.  They had not noticed that Georges 
Hugon was close by and that he was listening to them, blushing so 
hotly the while that a rosy flush had spread from his ears to his 
girlish throat.  The infant was full of shame and of ecstasy.  From 
the moment his mother had turned him loose in the room he had been 
hovering in the wake of Mme de Chezelles, the only woman present who 
struck him as being the thing.  But after all is said and done, Nana 
licked her to fits!

"Yesterday evening," Mme Hugon was saying, "Georges took me to the 
play.  Yes, we went to the Varietes, where I certainly had not set 
foot for the last ten years.  That child adores music.  As to me, I 
wasn't in the least amused, but he was so happy!  They put 
extraordinary pieces on the stage nowadays.  Besides, music delights 
me very little, I confess."

"What!  You don't love music, madame?" cried Mme du Joncquoy, 
lifting her eyes to heaven.  "Is it possible there should be people 
who don't love music?"

The exclamation of surprise was general.  No one had dropped a 
single word concerning the performance at the Varietes, at which the 
good Mme Hugon had not understood any of the allusions.  The ladies 
knew the piece but said nothing about it, and with that they plunged 
into the realm of sentiment and began discussing the masters in a 
tone of refined and ecstatical admiration.  Mme du Joncquoy was not 
fond of any of them save Weber, while Mme Chantereau stood up for 
the Italians.  The ladies' voices had turned soft and languishing, 
and in front of the hearth one might have fancied one's self 
listening in meditative, religious retirement to the faint, discreet 
music of a little chapel.

"Now let's see," murmured Vandeuvres, bringing Fauchery back into 
the middle of the drawing room, "notwithstanding it all, we must 
invent a woman for tomorrow.  Shall we ask Steiner about it?"

"Oh, when Steiner's got hold of a woman," said the journalist, "it's 
because Paris has done with her."

Vandeuvres, however, was searching about on every side.

"Wait a bit," he continued, "the other day I met Foucarmont with a 
charming blonde.  I'll go and tell him to bring her."

And he called to Foucarmont.  They exchanged a few words rapidly.  
There must have been some sort of complication, for both of them, 
moving carefully forward and stepping over the dresses of the 
ladies, went off in quest of another young man with whom they 
continued the discussion in the embrasure of a window.  Fauchery was 
left to himself and had just decided to proceed to the hearth, where 
Mme du Joncquoy was announcing that she never heard Weber played 
without at the same time seeing lakes, forests and sunrises over 
landscapes steeped in dew, when a hand touched his shoulder and a 
voice behind him remarked:

"It's not civil of you."

"What d'you mean?" he asked, turning round and recognizing La 
Faloise.

"Why, about that supper tomorrow.  You might easily have got me 
invited."

Fauchery was at length about to state his reasons when Vandeuvres 
came back to tell him:

"It appears it isn't a girl of Foucarmont's.  It's that man's flame 
out there.  She won't be able to come.  What a piece of bad luck!  
But all the same I've pressed Foucarmont into the service, and he's 
going to try to get Louise from the Palais-Royal."

"Is it not true, Monsieur de Vandeuvres," asked Mme Chantereau, 
raising her voice, "that Wagner's music was hissed last Sunday?"

"Oh, frightfully, madame," he made answer, coming forward with his 
usual exquisite politeness.

Then, as they did not detain him, he moved off and continued 
whispering in the journalist's ear:

"I'm going to press some more of them.  These young fellows must 
know some little ladies."

With that he was observed to accost men and to engage them in 
conversation in his usual amiable and smiling way in every corner of 
the drawing room.  He mixed with the various groups, said something 
confidently to everyone and walked away again with a sly wink and a 
secret signal or two.  It looked as though he were giving out a 
watchword in that easy way of his.  The news went round; the place 
of meeting was announced, while the ladies' sentimental 
dissertations on music served to conceal the small, feverish rumor 
of these recruiting operations.

"No, do not speak of your Germans," Mme Chantereau was saying.  
"Song is gaiety; song is light.  Have you heard Patti in the Barber 
of Seville?"

"She was delicious!" murmured Leonide, who strummed none but 
operatic airs on her piano.

Meanwhile the Countess Sabine had rung.  When on Tuesdays the number 
of visitors was small, tea was handed round the drawing room itself.  
While directing a footman to clear a round table the countess 
followed the Count de Vandeuvres with her eyes.  She still smiled 
that vague smile which slightly disclosed her white teeth, and as 
the count passed she questioned him.

"What ARE you plotting, Monsieur de Vandeuvres?"

"What am I plotting, madame?" he answered quietly.  "Nothing at 
all."

"Really!  I saw you so busy.  Pray, wait, you shall make yourself 
useful!"

She placed an album in his hands and asked him to put it on the 
piano.  But he found means to inform Fauchery in a low whisper that 
they would have Tatan Nene, the most finely developed girl that 
winter, and Maria Blond, the same who had just made her first 
appearance at the Folies-Dramatiques.  Meanwhile La Faloise stopped 
him at every step in hopes of receiving an invitation.  He ended by 
offering himself, and Vandeuvres engaged him in the plot at once; 
only he made him promise to bring Clarisse with him, and when La 
Faloise pretended to scruple about certain points he quieted him by 
the remark:

"Since I invite you that's enough!"

Nevertheless, La Faloise would have much liked to know the name of 
the hostess.  But the countess had recalled Vandeuvres and was 
questioning him as to the manner in which the English made tea.  He 
often betook himself to England, where his horses ran.  Then as 
though he had been inwardly following up quite a laborious train of 
thought during his remarks, he broke in with the question:

"And the marquis, by the by?  Are we not to see him?"

"Oh, certainly you will!  My father made me a formal promise that he 
would come," replied the countess.  "But I'm beginning to be 
anxious.  His duties will have kept him."

Vandeuvres smiled a discreet smile.  He, too, seemed to have his 
doubts as to the exact nature of the Marquis de Chouard's duties.  
Indeed, he had been thinking of a pretty woman whom the marquis 
occasionally took into the country with him.  Perhaps they could get 
her too.

In the meantime Fauchery decided that the moment had come in which 
to risk giving Count Muff  his invitation.  The evening, in fact, 
was drawing to a close.

"Are you serious?" asked Vandeuvres, who thought a joke was 
intended.

"Extremely serious.  If I don't execute my commission she'll tear my 
eyes out.  It's a case of landing her fish, you know."

"Well then, I'll help you, dear boy."

Eleven o'clock struck.  Assisted by her daughter, the countess was 
pouring out the tea, and as hardly any guests save intimate friends 
had come, the cups and the platefuls of little cakes were being 
circulated without ceremony.  Even the ladies did not leave their 
armchairs in front of the fire and sat sipping their tea and 
nibbling cakes which they held between their finger tips.  From 
music the talk had declined to purveyors.  Boissier was the only 
person for sweetmeats and Catherine for ices.  Mme Chantereau, 
however, was all for Latinville.  Speech grew more and more 
indolent, and a sense of lassitude was lulling the room to sleep.  
Steiner had once more set himself secretly to undermine the deputy, 
whom he held in a state of blockade in the corner of a settee.  M. 
Venot, whose teeth must have been ruined by sweet things, was eating 
little dry cakes, one after the other, with a small nibbling sound 
suggestive of a mouse, while the chief clerk, his nose in a teacup, 
seemed never to be going to finish its contents.  As to the 
countess, she went in a leisurely way from one guest to another, 
never pressing them, indeed, only pausing a second or two before the 
gentlemen whom she viewed with an air of dumb interrogation before 
she smiled and passed on.  The great fire had flushed all her face, 
and she looked as if she were the sister of her daughter, who 
appeared so withered and ungainly at her side.  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.

The last-named, whose face had worn its gray look all the evening, 
seemed very much surprised.  What lady was it?

"Oh, Nana!" said Vandeuvres, by way of forcing the invitation.

The count became more grave than before.  His eyelids trembled just 
perceptibly, while a look of discomfort, such as headache produces, 
hovered for a moment athwart his forehead.

"But I'm not acquainted with that lady," he murmured.

"Come, come, you went to her house," remarked Vandeuvres.

"What d'you say?  I went to her house?  Oh yes, the other day, in 
behalf of the Benevolent Organization.  I had forgotten about it.  
But, no matter, I am not acquainted with her, and I cannot accept."

He had adopted an icy expression in order to make them understand 
that this jest did not appear to him to be in good taste.  A man of 
his position did not sit down at tables of such women as that.  
Vandeuvres protested: it was to be a supper party of dramatic and 
artistic people, and talent excused everything.  But without 
listening further to the arguments urged by Fauchery, who spoke of a 
dinner where the Prince of Scots, the son of a queen, had sat down 
beside an ex-music-hall singer, the count only emphasized his 
refusal.  In so doing, he allowed himself, despite his great 
politeness, to be guilty of an irritated gesture.

Georges and La Faloise, standing in front of each other drinking 
their tea, had overheard the two or three phrases exchanged in their 
immediate neighborhood.

"Jove, it's at Nana's then," murmured La Faloise.  "I might have 
expected as much!"

Georges said nothing, but he was all aflame.  His fair hair was in 
disorder; his blue eyes shone like tapers, so fiercely had the vice, 
which for some days past had surrounded him, inflamed and stirred 
his blood.  At last he was going to plunge into all that he had 
dreamed of!

"I don't know the address," La Faloise resumed.

"She lives on a third floor in the Boulevard Haussmann, between the 
Rue de l'Arcade and the Rue Pesquier," said Georges all in a breath.

And when the other looked at him in much astonishment, he added, 
turning very red and fit to sink into the ground with embarrassment 
and conceit:

"I'm of the party.  She invited me this morning."

But there was a great stir in the drawing room, and Vandeuvres and 
Fauchery could not continue pressing the count.  The Marquis de 
Chouard had just come in, and everyone was anxious to greet him.  He 
had moved painfully forward, his legs failing under him, and he now 
stood in the middle of the room with pallid face and eyes blinking, 
as though he had just come out of some dark alley and were blinded 
by the brightness of the lamps.

"I scarcely hoped to see you tonight, Father," said the countess.  
"I should have been anxious till the morning."

He looked at her without answering, as a man might who fails to 
understand.  His nose, which loomed immense on his shorn face, 
looked like a swollen pimple, while his lower lip hung down.  Seeing 
him such a wreck, Mme Hugon, full of kind compassion, said pitying 
things to him.

"You work too hard.  You ought to rest yourself.  At our age we 
ought to leave work to the young people."

"Work!  Ah yes, to be sure, work!" he stammered at last.  "Always 
plenty of work."

He began to pull himself together, straightening up his bent figure 
and passing his hand, as was his wont, over his scant gray hair, of 
which a few locks strayed behind his ears.

"At what are you working as late as this?" asked Mme du Joncquoy.  
"I thought you were at the financial minister's reception?"

But the countess intervened with:

"My father had to study the question of a projected law."

"Yes, a projected law," he said; "exactly so, a projected law.  I 
shut myself up for that reason.  It refers to work in factories, and 
I was anxious for a proper observance of the Lord's day of rest.  It 
is really shameful that the government is unwilling to act with 
vigor in the matter.  Churches are growing empty; we are running 
headlong to ruin."

Vandeuvres had exchanged glances with Fauchery.  They both happened 
to be behind the marquis, and they were scanning him suspiciously.  
When Vandeuvres found an opportunity to take him aside and to speak 
to him about the good-looking creature he was in the habit of taking 
down into the country, the old man affected extreme surprise.  
Perhaps someone had seen him with the Baroness Decker, at whose 
house at Viroflay he sometimes spent a day or so.  Vandeuvres's sole 
vengeance was an abrupt question:

"Tell me, where have you been straying to?  Your elbow is covered 
with cobwebs and plaster."

"My elbow," he muttered, slightly disturbed.  "Yes indeed, it's 
true.  A speck or two, I must have come in for them on my way down 
from my office."

Several people were taking their departure.  It was close on 
midnight.  Two footmen were noiselessly removing the empty cups and 
the plates with cakes.  In front of the hearth the ladies had re-
formed and, at the same time, narrowed their circle and were 
chatting more carelessly than before in the languid atmosphere 
peculiar to the close of a party.  The very room was going to sleep, 
and slowly creeping shadows were cast by its walls.  It was then 
Fauchery spoke of departure.  Yet he once more forgot his intention 
at sight of the Countess Sabine.  She was resting from her cares as 
hostess, and as she sat in her wonted seat, silent, her eyes fixed 
on a log which was turning into embers, her face appeared so white 
and so impassable that doubt again possessed him.  In the glow of 
the fire the small black hairs on the mole at the corner of her lip 
became white.  It was Nana's very mole, down to the color of the 
hair.  He could not refrain from whispering something about it in 
Vandeuvres's ear.  Gad, it was true; the other had never noticed it 
before.  And both men continued this comparison of Nana and the 
countess.  They discovered a vague resemblance about the chin and 
the mouth, but the eyes were not at all alike.  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.  Will you bet she has no thighs?"

He stopped, for Fauchery touched him briskly on the arm and showed 
him Estelle, sitting close to them on her footstool.  They had 
raised their voices without noticing her, and she must have 
overheard them.  Nevertheless, she continued sitting there stiff and 
motionless, not a hair having lifted on her thin neck, which was 
that of a girl who has shot up all too quickly.  Thereupon they 
retired three or four paces, and Vandeuvres vowed that the countess 
was a very honest woman.  Just then voices were raised in front of 
the hearth.  Mme du Joncquoy was saying:

"I was willing to grant you that Monsieur de Bismarck was perhaps a 
witty man.  Only, if you go as far as to talk of genius--"

The ladies had come round again to their earliest topic of 
conversation.

"What the deuce!  Still Monsieur de Bismarck!" muttered Fauchery.  
"This time I make my escape for good and all."

"Wait a bit," said Vandeuvres, "we must have a definite no from the 
count."

The Count Muffat was talking to his father-in-law and a certain 
serious-looking gentleman.  Vandeuvres drew him away and renewed the 
invitation, backing it up with the information that he was to be at 
the supper himself.  A man might go anywhere; no one could think of 
suspecting evil where at most there could only be curiosity.  The 
count listened to these arguments with downcast eyes and 
expressionless face.  Vandeuvres felt him to be hesitating when the 
Marquis de Chouard approached with a look of interrogation.  And 
when the latter was informed of the question in hand and Fauchery 
had invited him in his turn, he looked at his son-in-law furtively.  
There ensued an embarrassed silence, but both men encouraged one 
another and would doubtless have ended by accepting had not Count 
Muffat perceived M. Venot's gaze fixed upon him.  The little old man 
was no longer smiling; his face was cadaverous, his eyes bright and 
keen as steel.

'No," replied the count directly, in so decisive a tone that further 
insistence became impossible.

Then the marquis refused with even greater severity of expression.  
He talked morality.  The aristocratic classes ought to set a good 
example.  Fauchery smiled and shook hands with Vandeuvres.  He did 
not wait for him and took his departure immediately, for he was due 
at his newspaper office.

"At Nana's at midnight, eh?"

La Faloise retired too.  Steiner had made his bow to the countess.  
Other men followed them, and the same phrase went round--"At 
midnight, at Nana's"--as they went to get their overcoats in the 
anteroom.  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.  Count 
Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard were joining in the conversation, 
while the good Mme Hugon was falling asleep open-eyed.  Lost among 
the petticoats, M. Venot was his own small self again and smiled as 
of old.  Twelve struck slowly in the great solemn room.

"What--what do you mean?" Mme du Joncquoy resumed.  "You imagine 
that Monsieur de Bismarck will make war on us and beat us!  Oh, 
that's unbearable!"

Indeed, they were laughing round Mme Chantereau, who had just 
repeated an assertion she had heard made in Alsace, where her 
husband owned a foundry.

"We have the emperor, fortunately," said Count Muffat in his grave, 
official way.

It was the last phrase Fauchery was able to catch.  He closed the 
door after casting one more glance in the direction of the Countess 
Sabine.  She was talking sedately with the chief clerk and seemed to 
be interested in that stout individual's conversation.  Assuredly he 
must have been deceiving himself.  There was no "little rift" there 
at all.  It was a pity.

"You're not coming down then?" La Faloise shouted up to him from the 
entrance hall.

And out on the pavement, as they separated, they once more repeated:

"Tomorrow, at Nana's."



CHAPTER IV


Since morning Zoe had delivered up the flat to a managing man who 
had come from Brebant's with a staff of helpers and waiters.  
Brebant was to supply everything, from the supper, the plates and 
dishes, the glass, the linen, the flowers, down to the seats and 
footstools.  Nana could not have mustered a dozen napkins out of all 
her cupboards, and not having had time to get a proper outfit after 
her new start in life and scorning to go to the restaurant, she had 
decided to make the restaurant come to her.  It struck her as being 
more the thing.  She wanted to celebrate her great success as an 
actress with a supper which should set people talking.  As her 
dining room was too small, the manager had arranged the table in the 
drawing room, a table with twenty-five covers, placed somewhat close 
together.

"Is everything ready?" asked Nana when she returned at midnight.

"Oh! I don't know," replied Zoe roughly, looking beside herself with 
worry.  "The Lord be thanked, I don't bother about anything.  
They're making a fearful mess in the kitchen and all over the flat!  
I've had to fight my battles too.  The other two came again.  My 
eye!  I did just chuck 'em out!"

She referred, of course, to her employer's old admirers, the 
tradesman and the Walachian, to whom Nana, sure of her future and 
longing to shed her skin, as she phrased it, had decided to give the 
go-by.

"There are a couple of leeches for you!" she muttered.

"If they come back threaten to go to the police."

Then she called Daguenet and Georges, who had remained behind in the 
anteroom, where they were hanging up their overcoats.  They had both 
met at the stage door in the Passage des Panoramas, and she had 
brought them home with her in a cab.  As there was nobody there yet, 
she shouted to them to come into the dressing room while Zoe was 
touching up her toilet.  Hurriedly and without changing her dress 
she had her hair done up and stuck white roses in her chignon and at 
her bosom.  The little room was littered with the drawing-room 
furniture, which the workmen had been compelled to roll in there, 
and it was full of a motley assemblage of round tables, sofas and 
armchairs, with their legs in air for the most part.  Nana was quite 
ready when her dress caught on a castor and tore upward.  At this 
she swore furiously; such things only happened to her!  Ragingly she 
took off her dress, a very simple affair of white foulard, of so 
thin and supple a texture that it clung about her like a long shift.  
But she put it on again directly, for she could not find another to 
her taste, and with tears in her eyes declared that she was dressed 
like a ragpicker.  Daguenet and Georges had to patch up the rent 
with pins, while Zoe once more arranged her hair.  All three hurried 
round her, especially the boy, who knelt on the floor with his hands 
among her skirts.  And at last she calmed down again when Daguenet 
assured her it could not be later than a quarter past twelve, seeing 
that by dint of scamping her words and skipping her lines she had 
effectually shortened the third act of the Blonde Venus.

"The play's still far too good for that crowd of idiots," she said.  
"Did you see?  There were thousands there tonight.  Zoe, my girl, 
you will wait in here.  Don't go to bed, I shall want you.  By gum, 
it is time they came.  Here's company!"

She ran off while Georges stayed where he was with the skirts of his 
coat brushing the floor.  He blushed, seeing Daguenet looking at 
him.  Notwithstanding which, they had conceived a tender regard the 
one for the other.  They rearranged the bows of their cravats in 
front of the big dressing glass and gave each other a mutual dose of 
the clothesbrush, for they were all white from their close contact 
with Nana.

"One would think it was sugar," murmured Georges, giggling like a 
greedy little child.

A footman hired for the evening was ushering the guests into the 
small drawing room, a narrow slip of a place in which only four 
armchairs had been left in order the better to pack in the company.  
From the large drawing room beyond came a sound as of the moving of 
plates and silver, while a clear and brilliant ray of light shone 
from under the door.  At her entrance Nana found Clarisse Besnus, 
whom La Faloise had brought, already installed in one of the 
armchairs.

"Dear me, you're the first of 'em!" said Nana, who, now that she was 
successful, treated her familiarly.

"Oh, it's his doing," replied Clarisse.  "He's always afraid of not 
getting anywhere in time.  If I'd taken him at his word I shouldn't 
have waited to take off my paint and my wig."

The young man, who now saw Nana for the first time, bowed, paid her 
a compliment and spoke of his cousin, hiding his agitation behind an 
exaggeration of politeness.  But Nana, neither listening to him nor 
recognizing his face, shook hands with him and then went briskly 
toward Rose Mignon, with whom she at once assumed a most 
distinguished manner.

"Ah, how nice of you, my dear madame!  I was so anxious to have you 
here!"

"It's I who am charmed, I assure you," said Rose with equal 
amiability.

"Pray, sit down.  Do you require anything?"

"Thank you, no!  Ah yes, I've left my fan in my pelisse, Steiner; 
just look in the right-hand pocket."

Steiner and Mignon had come in behind Rose.  The banker turned back 
and reappeared with the fan while Mignon embraced Nana fraternally 
and forced Rose to do so also.  Did they not all belong to the same 
family in the theatrical world?  Then he winked as though to 
encourage Steiner, but the latter was disconcerted by Rose's clear 
gaze and contented himself by kissing Nana's hand.

Just then the Count de Vandeuvres made his appearance with Blanche 
de Sivry.  There was an interchange of profound bows, and Nana with 
the utmost ceremony conducted Blanche to an armchair.  Meanwhile 
Vandeuvres told them laughingly that Fauchery was engaged in a 
dispute at the foot of the stairs because the porter had refused to 
allow Lucy Stewart's carriage to come in at the gate.  They could 
hear Lucy telling the porter he was a dirty blackguard in the 
anteroom.  But when the footman had opened the door she came forward 
with her laughing grace of manner, announced her name herself, took 
both Nana's hands in hers and told her that she had liked her from 
the very first and considered her talent splendid.  Nana, puffed up 
by her novel role of hostess, thanked her and was veritably 
confused.  Nevertheless, from the moment of Fauchery's arrival she 
appeared preoccupied, and directly she could get near him she asked 
him in a low voice:

"Will he come?"

"No, he did not want to," was the journalist's abrupt reply, for he 
was taken by surprise, though he had got ready some sort of tale to 
explain Count Muffat's refusal.

Seeing the young woman's sudden pallor, he became conscious of his 
folly and tried to retract his words.

"He was unable to; he is taking the countess to the ball at the 
Ministry of the Interior tonight."

"All right," murmured Nana, who suspected him of ill will, "you'll 
pay me out for that, my pippin."

She turned on her heel, and so did he; they were angry.  Just then 
Mignon was pushing Steiner up against Nana, and when Fauchery had 
left her he said to her in a low voice and with the good-natured 
cynicism of a comrade in arms who wishes his friends to be happy:

"He's dying of it, you know, only he's afraid of my wife.  Won't you 
protect him?"

Nana did not appear to understand.  She smiled and looked at Rose, 
the husband and the banker and finally said to the latter:

"Monsieur Steiner, you will sit next to me."

With that there came from the anteroom a sound of laughter and 
whispering and a burst of merry, chattering voices, which sounded as 
if a runaway convent were on the premises.  And Labordette appeared, 
towing five women in his rear, his boarding school, as Lucy Stewart 
cruelly phrased it.  There was Gaga, majestic in a blue velvet dress 
which was too tight for her, and Caroline Hequet, clad as usual in 
ribbed black silk, trimmed with Chantilly lace.  Lea de Horn came 
next, terribly dressed up, as her wont was, and after her the big 
Tatan Nene, a good-humored fair girl with the bosom of a wet nurse, 
at which people laughed, and finally little Maria Blond, a young 
damsel of fifteen, as thin and vicious as a street child, yet on the 
high road to success, owing to her recent first appearance at the 
Folies.  Labordette had brought the whole collection in a single 
fly, and they were stlll laughing at the way they had been squeezed 
with Maria Blond on her knees.  But on entering the room they pursed 
up their lips, and all grew very conventional as they shook hands 
and exchanged salutations.  Gaga even affected the infantile and 
lisped through excess of genteel deportment.  Tatan Nene alone 
transgressed.  They had been telling her as they came along that six 
absolutely naked Negroes would serve up Nana's supper, and she now 
grew anxious about them and asked to see them.  Labordette called 
her a goose and besought her to be silent.

"And Bordenave?" asked Fauchery.

"Oh, you may imagine how miserable I am," cried Nana; "he won't be 
able to join us."

"Yes," said Rose Mignon, "his foot caught in a trap door, and he's 
got a fearful sprain.  If only you could hear him swearing, with his 
leg tied up and laid out on a chair!"

Thereupon everybody mourned over Bordenave's absence.  No one ever 
gave a good supper without Bordenave.  Ah well, they would try and 
do without him, and they were already talking about other matters 
when a burly voice was heard:

"What, eh, what?  Is that the way they're going to write my obituary 
notice?"

There was a shout, and all heads were turned round, for it was 
indeed Bordenave.  Huge and fiery-faced, he was standing with his 
stiff leg in the doorway, leaning for support on Simonne Cabiroche's 
shoulder.  Simonne was for the time being his mistress.  This little 
creature had had a certain amount of education and could play the 
piano and talk English.  She was a blonde on a tiny, pretty scale 
and so delicately formed that she seemed to bend under Bordenave's 
rude weight.  Yet she was smilingly submissive withal.  He postured 
there for some moments, for he felt that together they formed a 
tableau.

"One can't help liking ye, eh?" he continued.  "Zounds, I was afraid 
I should get bored, and I said to myself, 'Here goes.'"

But he interrupted himself with an oath.

"Oh, damn!"

Simonne had taken a step too quickly forward, and his foot had just 
felt his full weight.  He gave her a rough push, but she, still 
smiling away and ducking her pretty head as some animal might that 
is afraid of a beating, held him up with all the strength a little 
plump blonde can command.  Amid all these exclamations there was a 
rush to his assistance.  Nana and Rose Mignon rolled up an armchair, 
into which Bordenave let himself sink, while the other women slid a 
second one under his leg.  And with that all the actresses present 
kissed him as a matter of course.  He kept grumbling and gasping.

"Oh, damn!  Oh, damn!  Ah well, the stomach's unhurt, you'll see."

Other guests had arrived by this time, and motion became impossible 
in the room.  The noise of clinking plates and silver had ceased, 
and now a dispute was heard going on in the big drawing room, where 
the voice of the manager grumbled angrily.  Nana was growing 
impatient, for she expected no more invited guests and wondered why 
they did not bring in supper.  She had just sent Georges to find out 
what was going on when, to her great surprise, she noticed the 
arrival of more guests, both male and female.  She did not know them 
in the least.  Whereupon with some embarrassment she questioned 
Bordenave, Mignon and Labordette about them.  They did not know them 
any more than she did, but when she turned to the Count de 
Vandeuvres he seemed suddenly to recollect himself.  They were the 
young men he had pressed into her service at Count Muffat's.  Nana 
thanked him.  That was capital, capital!  Only they would all be 
terribly crowded, and she begged Labordette to go and have seven 
more covers set.  Scarcely had he left the room than the footman 
ushered in three newcomers.  Nay, this time the thing was becoming 
ridiculous; one certainly could never take them all in.  Nana was 
beginning to grow angry and in her haughtiest manner announced that 
such conduct was scarcely in good taste.  But seeing two more 
arrive, she began laughing; it was really too funny.  So much the 
worse.  People would have to fit in anyhow!  The company were all on 
their feet save Gaga and Rose and Bordenave, who alone took up two 
armchairs.  There was a buzz of voices, people talking in low tones 
and stifling slight yawns the while.

"Now what d'you say, my lass," asked Bordenave, "to our sitting down 
at table as if nothing had happened?  We are all here, don't you 
think?"

"Oh yes, we're all here, I promise you!" she answered laughingly.

She looked round her but grew suddenly serious, as though she were 
surprised at not finding someone.  Doubtless there was a guest 
missing whom she did not mention.  It was a case of waiting.  But a 
minute or two later the company noticed in their midst a tall 
gentleman with a fine face and a beautiful white beard.  The most 
astonishing thing about it was that nobody had seen him come in; 
indeed, he must have slipped into the little drawing room through 
the bedroom door, which had remained ajar.  Silence reigned, broken 
only by a sound of whispering.  The Count de Vandeuvres certainly 
knew who the gentleman was, for they both exchanged a discreet 
handgrip, but to the questions which the women asked him he replied 
by a smile only.  Thereupon Caroline Hequet wagered in a low voice 
that it was an English lord who was on the eve of returning to 
London to be married.  She knew him quite well--she had had him.  
And this account of the matter went the round of the ladies present, 
Maria Blond alone asserting that, for her part, she recognized a 
German ambassador.  She could prove it, because he often passed the 
night with one of her friends.  Among the men his measure was taken 
in a few rapid phrases.  A real swell, to judge by his looks!  
Perhaps he would pay for the supper!  Most likely.  It looked like 
it.  Bah!  Provided only the supper was a good one!  In the end the 
company remained undecided.  Nay, they were already beginning to 
forget the old white-bearded gentleman when the manager opened the 
door of the large drawing room.

"Supper is on the table, madame."

Nana had already accepted Steiner's proffered arm without noticing a 
movement on the part of the old gentleman, who started to walk 
behind her in solitary state.  Thus the march past could not be 
organized, and men and women entered anyhow, joking with homely good 
humor over this absence of ceremony.  A long table stretched from 
one end to the other of the great room, which had been entirely 
cleared of furniture, and this same table was not long enough, for 
the plates thereon were touching one another.  Four candelabra, with 
ten candles apiece, lit up the supper, and of these one was gorgeous 
in silver plate with sheaves of flowers to right and left of it.  
Everything was luxurious after the restaurant fashion; the china was 
ornamented with a gold line and lacked the customary monogram; the 
silver had become worn and tarnished through dint of continual 
washings; the glass was of the kind that you can complete an odd set 
of in any cheap emporium.

The scene suggested a premature housewarming in an establishment 
newly smiled on by fortune and as yet lacking the necessary 
conveniences.  There was no central luster, and the candelabra, 
whose tall tapers had scarcely burned up properly, cast a pale 
yellow light among the dishes and stands on which fruit, cakes and 
preserves alternated symmetrically.

"You sit where you like, you know," said Nana.  "It's more amusing 
that way."

She remained standing midway down the side of the table.  The old 
gentleman whom nobody knew had placed himself on her right, while 
she kept Steiner on her left hand.  Some guests were already sitting 
down when the sound of oaths came from the little drawing room.  It 
was Bordenave.  The company had forgotten him, and he was having all 
the trouble in the world to raise himself out of his two armchairs, 
for he was howling amain and calling for that cat of a Simonne, who 
had slipped off with the rest.  The women ran in to him, full of 
pity for his woes, and Bordenave appeared, supported, nay, almost 
carried, by Caroline, Clarisse, Tatan Nene and Maria Blond.  And 
there was much to-do over his installation at the table.

"In the middle, facing Nana!" was the cry.  "Bordenave in the 
middle!  He'll be our president!"

Thereupon the ladies seated him in the middle.  But he needed a 
second chair for his leg, and two girls lifted it up and stretched 
it carefully out.  It wouldn't matter; he would eat sideways.

"God blast it all!" he grumbled.  "We're squashed all the same!  Ah, 
my kittens, Papa recommends himself to your tender care!"

He had Rose Mignon on his right and Lucy Stewart on his left hand, 
and they promised to take good care of him.  Everybody was now 
getting settled.  Count de Vandeuvres placed himself between Lucy 
and Clarisse; Fauchery between Rose Mignon and Caroline Hequet.  On 
the other side of the table Hector de la Faloise had rushed to get 
next Gaga, and that despite the calls of Clarisse opposite, while 
Mignon, who never deserted Steiner, was only separated from him by 
Blanche and had Tatan Nene on his left.  Then came Labordette and, 
finally, at the two ends of the table were irregular crowding groups 
of young men and of women, such as Simonne, Lea de Horn and Maria 
Blond.  It was in this region that Daguenet and Georges forgathered 
more warmly than ever while smilingly gazing at Nana.

Nevertheless, two people remained standing, and there was much 
joking about it.  The men offered seats on their knees.  Clarisse, 
who could not move her elbows, told Vandeuvres that she counted on 
him to feed her.  And then that Bordenave did just take up space 
with his chairs!  There was a final effort, and at last everybody 
was seated, but, as Mignon loudly remarked, they were confoundedly 
like herrings in a barrel.

"Thick asparagus soup a la comtesse, clear soup a la Deslignac," 
murmured the waiters, carrying about platefuls in rear of the 
guests.

Bordenave was loudly recommending the thick soup when a shout arose, 
followed by protests and indignant exclamations.  The door had just 
opened, and three late arrivals, a woman and two men, had just come 
in.  Oh dear, no!  There was no space for them!  Nana, however, 
without leaving her chair, began screwing up her eyes in the effort 
to find out whether she knew them.  The woman was Louise Violaine, 
but she had never seen the men before.

"This gentleman, my dear," said Vandeuvres, "is a friend of mine, a 
naval officer, Monsieur de Foucarmont by name.  I invited him."

Foucarmont bowed and seemed very much at ease, for he added:

"And I took leave to bring one of my friends with me."

"Oh, it's quite right, quite right!" said Nana.  "Sit down, pray.  
Let's see, you--Clarisse--push up a little.  You're a good deal 
spread out down there.  That's it--where there's a will--"

They crowded more tightly than ever, and Foucarmont and Louise were 
given a little stretch of table, but the friend had to sit at some 
distance from his plate and ate his supper through dint of making a 
long arm between his neighbors' shoulders.  The waiters took away 
the soup plates and circulated rissoles of young rabbit with 
truffles and "niokys" and powdered cheese.  Bordenave agitated the 
whole table with the announcement that at one moment he had had the 
idea of bringing with him Prulliere, Fontan and old Bosc.  At this 
Nana looked sedate and remarked dryly that she would have given them 
a pretty reception.  Had she wanted colleagues, she would certainly 
have undertaken to ask them herself.  No, no, she wouldn't have 
third-rate play actors.  Old Bosc was always drunk; Prulliere was 
fond of spitting too much, and as to Fontan, he made himself 
unbearable in society with his loud voice and his stupid doings.  
Then, you know, third-rate play actors were always out of place when 
they found themselves in the society of gentlemen such as those 
around her.

"Yes, yes, it's true," Mignon declared.

All round the table the gentlemen in question looked unimpeachable 
in the extreme, what with their evening dress and their pale 
features, the natural distinction of which was still further refined 
by fatigue.  The old gentleman was as deliberate in his movements 
and wore as subtle a smile as though he were presiding over a 
diplomatic congress, and Vandeuvres, with his exquisite politeness 
toward the ladies next to him, seemed to be at one of the Countess 
Muffat's receptions.  That very morning Nana had been remarking to 
her aunt that in the matter of men one could not have done better--
they were all either wellborn or wealthy, in fact, quite the thing.  
And as to the ladies, they were behaving admirably.  Some of them, 
such as Blanche, Lea and Louise, had come in low dresses, but Gaga's 
only was perhaps a little too low, the more so because at her age 
she would have done well not to show her neck at all.  Now that the 
company were finally settled the laughter and the light jests began 
to fail.  Georges was under the impression that he had assisted at 
merrier dinner parties among the good folks of Orleans.  There was 
scarcely any conversation.  The men, not being mutually acquainted, 
stared at one another, while the women sat quite quiet, and it was 
this which especially surprised Georges.  He thought them all smugs--
he had been under the impression that everybody would begin kissing 
at once.

The third course, consisting of a Rhine carp a la Chambord and a 
saddle of venison a l'anglaise, was being served when Blanche 
remarked aloud:

"Lucy, my dear, I met your Ollivier on Sunday.  How he's grown!"

"Dear me, yes!  He's eighteen," replied Lucy.  "It doesn't make me 
feel any younger.  He went back to his school yesterday."

Her son Ollivier, whom she was wont to speak of with pride, was a 
pupil at the Ecole de Marine.  Then ensued a conversation about the 
young people, during which all the ladies waxed very tender.  Nana 
described her own great happiness.  Her baby, the little Louis, she 
said, was now at the house of her aunt, who brought him round to her 
every morning at eleven o'clock, when she would take him into her 
bed, where he played with her griffon dog Lulu.  It was enough to 
make one die of laughing to see them both burying themselves under 
the clothes at the bottom of the bed.  The company had no idea how 
cunning Louiset had already become.

"Oh, yesterday I did just pass a day!" said Rose Mignon in her turn.  
"Just imagine, I went to fetch Charles and Henry at their boarding 
school, and I had positively to take them to the theater at night.  
They jumped; they clapped their little hands: 'We shall see Mamma 
act!  We shall see Mamma act!'  Oh, it was a to-do!"

Mignon smiled complaisantly, his eyes moist with paternal 
tenderness.

"And at the play itself," he continued, "they were so funny!  They 
behaved as seriously as grown men, devoured Rose with their eyes and 
asked me why Mamma had her legs bare like that."

The whole table began laughing, and Mignon looked radiant, for his 
pride as a father was flattered.  He adored his children and had but 
one object in life, which was to increase their fortunes by 
administering the money gained by Rose at the theater and elsewhere 
with the businesslike severity of a faithful steward.  When as first 
fiddle in the music hall where she used to sing he had married her, 
they had been passionately fond of one another.  Now they were good 
friends.  There was an understanding between them: she labored hard 
to the full extent of her talent and of her beauty; he had given up 
his violin in order the better to watch over her successes as an 
actress and as a woman.  One could not have found a more homely and 
united household anywhere!

"What age is your eldest?" asked Vandeuvres.

"Henry's nine," replied Mignon, "but such a big chap for his years!"

Then he chaffed Steiner, who was not fond of children, and with 
quiet audacity informed him that were he a father, he would make a 
less stupid hash of his fortune.  While talking he watched the 
banker over Blanche's shoulders to see if it was coming off with 
Nana.  But for some minutes Rose and Fauchery, who were talking very 
near him, had been getting on his nerves.  Was Rose going to waste 
time over such a folly as that?  In that sort of case, by Jove, he 
blocked the way.  And diamond on finger and with his fine hands in 
great evidence, he finished discussing a fillet of venison.

Elsewhere the conversation about children continued.  La Faloise, 
rendered very restless by the immediate proximity of Gaga, asked 
news of her daughter, whom he had had the pleasure of noticing in 
her company at the Varietes.  Lili was quite well, but she was still 
such a tomboy!  He was astonished to learn that Lili was entering on 
her nineteenth year.  Gaga became even more imposing in his eyes, 
and when he endeavored to find out why she had not brought Lili with 
her:

"Oh no, no, never!" she said stiffly.  "Not three months ago she 
positively insisted on leaving her boarding school.  I was thinking 
of marrying her off at once, but she loves me so that I had to take 
her home--oh, so much against my will!"

Her blue eyelids with their blackened lashes blinked and wavered 
while she spoke of the business of settling her young lady.  If at 
her time of life she hadn't laid by a sou but was still always 
working to minister to men's pleasures, especially those very young 
men, whose grandmother she might well be, it was truly because she 
considered a good match of far greater importance than mere savings.  
And with that she leaned over La Faloise, who reddened under the 
huge, naked, plastered shoulder with which she well-nigh crushed 
him.

"You know," she murmured, "if she fails it won't be my fault.  But 
they're so strange when they're young!"

There was a considerable bustle round the table, and the waiters 
became very active.  After the third course the entrees had made 
their appearance; they consisted of pullets a la marechale, fillets 
of sole with shallot sauce and escalopes of Strasbourg pate.  The 
manager, who till then had been having Meursault served, now offered 
Chambertin and Leoville.  Amid the slight hubbub which the change of 
plates involved Georges, who was growing momentarily more 
astonished, asked Daguenet if all the ladies present were similarly 
provided with children, and the other, who was amused by this 
question, gave him some further details.  Lucy Stewart was the 
daughter of a man of English origin who greased the wheels of the 
trains at the Gare du Nord; she was thirty-nine years old and had 
the face of a horse but was adorable withal and, though consumptive, 
never died.  In fact, she was the smartest woman there and 
represented three princes and a duke.  Caroline Hequet, born at 
Bordeaux, daughter of a little clerk long since dead of shame, was 
lucky enough to be possessed of a mother with a head on her 
shoulders, who, after having cursed her, had made it up again at the 
end of a year of reflection, being minded, at any rate, to save a 
fortune for her daughter.  The latter was twenty-five years old and 
very passionless and was held to be one of the finest women it is 
possible to enjoy.  Her price never varied.  The mother, a model of 
orderliness, kept the accounts and noted down receipts and 
expenditures with severe precision.  She managed the whole household 
from some small lodging two stories above her daughter's, where, 
moreover, she had established a workroom for dressmaking and plain 
sewing.  As to Blanche de Sivry, whose real name was Jacqueline 
Bandu, she hailed from a village near Amiens.  Magnificent in 
person, stupid and untruthful in character, she gave herself out as 
the granddaughter of a general and never owned to her thirty-two 
summers.  The Russians had a great taste for her, owing to her 
embonpoint.  Then Daguenet added a rapid word or two about the rest.  
There was Clarisse Besnus, whom a lady had brought up from Saint-
Aubin-sur-Mer in the capacity of maid while the lady's husband had 
started her in quite another line.  There was Simonne Cabiroche, the 
daughter of a furniture dealer in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, who 
had been educated in a large boarding school with a view to becoming 
a governess.  Finally there were Maria Blond and Louise Violaine and 
Lea de Horn, who had all shot up to woman's estate on the pavements 
of Paris, not to mention Tatan Nene, who had herded cows in 
Champagne till she was twenty.

Georges listened and looked at these ladies, feeling dizzy and 
excited by the coarse recital thus crudely whispered in his ear, 
while behind his chair the waiters kept repeating in respectful 
tones:

"Pullets a la marechale; fillets of sole with ravigote sauce."

"My dear fellow," said Daguenet, giving him the benefit of his 
experience, "don't take any fish; it'll do you no good at this time 
of night.  And be content with Leoville: it's less treacherous."

A heavy warmth floated upward from the candelabras, from the dishes 
which were being handed round, from the whole table where thirty-
eight human beings were suffocating.  And the waiters forgot 
themselves and ran when crossing the carpet, so that it was spotted 
with grease.  Nevertheless, the supper grew scarce any merrier.  The 
ladies trifled with their meat, left half of it uneaten.  Tatan Nene 
alone partook gluttonously of every dish.  At that advanced hour of 
the night hunger was of the nervous order only, a mere whimsical 
craving born of an exasperated stomach.

At Nana's side the old gentleman refused every dish offered him; he 
had only taken a spoonful of soup, and he now sat in front of his 
empty plate, gazing silently about.  There was some subdued yawning, 
and occasionally eyelids closed and faces became haggard and white.  
It was unutterably slow, as it always was, according to Vandeuvres's 
dictum.  This sort of supper should be served anyhow if it was to be 
funny, he opined.  Otherwise when elegantly and conventionally done 
you might as well feed in good society, where you were not more 
bored than here.  Had it not been for Bordenave, who was still 
bawling away, everybody would have fallen asleep.  That rum old 
buffer Bordenave, with his leg duly stretched on its chair, was 
letting his neighbors, Lucy and Rose, wait on him as though he were 
a sultan.  They were entirely taken up with him, and they helped him 
and pampered him and watched over his glass and his plate, and yet 
that did not prevent his complaining.

"Who's going to cut up my meat for me?  I can't; the table's a 
league away."

Every few seconds Simonne rose and took up a position behind his 
back in order to cut his meat and his bread.  All the women took a 
great interest in the things he ate.  The waiters were recalled, and 
he was stuffed to suffocation.  Simonne having wiped his mouth for 
him while Rose and Lucy were changing his plate, her act struck him 
as very pretty and, deigning at length to show contentment:

"There, there, my daughter," he said, "that's as it should be.  
Women are made for that!"

There was a slight reawakening, and conversation became general as 
they finished discussing some orange sherbet.  The hot roast was a 
fillet with truffles, and the cold roast a galantine of guinea fowl 
in jelly.  Nana, annoyed by the want of go displayed by her guests, 
had begun talking with the greatest distinctness.

"You know the Prince of Scots has already had a stage box reserved 
so as to see the Blonde Venus when he comes to visit the 
exhibition."

"I very much hope that all the princes will come and see it," 
declared Bordenave with his mouth full.

"They are expecting the shah of Persia next Sunday," said Lucy 
Stewart.  Whereupon Rose Mignon spoke of the shah's diamonds.  He 
wore a tunic entirely covered with gems; it was a marvel, a flaming 
star; it represented millions.  And the ladies, with pale faces and 
eyes glittering with covetousness, craned forward and ran over the 
names of the other kings, the other emperors, who were shortly 
expected.  All of them were dreaming of some royal caprice, some 
night to be paid for by a fortune.

"Now tell me, dear boy," Caroline Hequet asked Vandeuvres, leaning 
forward as she did so, "how old's the emperor of Russia?"

"Oh, he's 'present time,'" replied the count, laughing.  "Nothing to 
be done in that quarter, I warn you."

Nana made pretense of being hurt.  The witticism appeared somewhat 
too stinging, and there was a murmur of protest.  But Blanche gave a 
description of the king of Italy, whom she had once seen at Milan.  
He was scarcely good looking, and yet that did not prevent him 
enjoying all the women.  She was put out somewhat when Fauchery 
assured her that Victor Emmanuel could not come to the exhibition.  
Louise Violaine and Lea favored the emperor of Austria, and all of a 
sudden little Maria Blond was heard saying:

"What an old stick the king of Prussia is!  I was at Baden last 
year, and one was always meeting him about with Count Bismarck."

"Dear me, Bismarck!" Simonne interrupted.  "I knew him once, I did.  
A charming man."

"That's what I was saying yesterday," cried Vandeuvres, "but nobody 
would believe me."

And just as at Countess Sabine's, there ensued a long discussion 
about Bismarck.  Vandeuvres repeated the same phrases, and for a 
moment or two one was again in the Muffats' drawing room, the only 
difference being that the ladies were changed.  Then, just as last 
night, they passed on to a discussion on music, after which, 
Foucarmont having let slip some mention of the assumption of the 
veil of which Paris was still talking, Nana grew quite interested 
and insisted on details about Mlle de Fougeray.  Oh, the poor child, 
fancy her burying herself alive like that!  Ah well, when it was a 
question of vocation!  All round the table the women expressed 
themselves much touched, and Georges, wearied at hearing these 
things a second time discussed, was beginning to ask Daguenet about 
Nana's ways in private life, when the conversation veered fatefully 
back to Count Bismarck.  Tatan Nene bent toward Labordette to ask 
him privily who this Bismarck might be, for she did not know him.  
Whereupon Labordette, in cold blood, told her some portentous 
anecdotes.  This Bismarck, he said, was in the habit of eating raw 
meat and when he met a woman near his den would carry her off 
thither on his back; at forty years of age he had already had as 
many as thirty-two children that way.

"Thirty-two children at forty!" cried Tatan Nene, stupefied and yet 
convinced.  "He must be jolly well worn out for his age."

There was a burst of merriment, and it dawned on her that she was 
being made game of.

"You sillies!  How am I to know if you're joking?"

Gaga, meanwhile, had stopped at the exhibition.  Like all these 
ladies, she was delightedly preparing for the fray.  A good season, 
provincials and foreigners rushing into Paris!  In the long run, 
perhaps, after the close of the exhibition she would, if her 
business had flourished, be able to retire to a little house at 
Jouvisy, which she had long had her eye on.

"What's to be done?" she said to La Faloise.  "One never gets what 
one wants!  Oh, if only one were still really loved!"

Gaga behaved meltingly because she had felt the young man's knee 
gently placed against her own.  He was blushing hotly and lisping as 
elegantly as ever.  She weighed him at a glance.  Not a very heavy 
little gentleman, to be sure, but then she wasn't hard to please.  
La Faloise obtained her address.

"Just look there," murmured Vandeuvres to Clarisse.  "I think Gaga's 
doing you out of your Hector."

"A good riddance, so far as I'm concerned," replied the actress.  
"That fellow's an idiot.  I've already chucked him downstairs three 
times.  You know, I'm disgusted when dirty little boys run after old 
women."

She broke off and with a little gesture indicated Blanche, who from 
the commencement of dinner had remained in a most uncomfortable 
attitude, sitting up very markedly, with the intention of displaying 
her shoulders to the old distinguished-looking gentleman three seats 
beyond her.

"You're being left too," she resumed.

Vandeuvres smiled his thin smile and made a little movement to 
signify he did not care.  Assuredly 'twas not he who would ever have 
prevented poor, dear Blanche scoring a success.  He was more 
interested by the spectacle which Steiner was presenting to the 
table at large.  The banker was noted for his sudden flames.  That 
terrible German Jew who brewed money, whose hands forged millions, 
was wont to turn imbecile whenever he became enamored of a woman.  
He wanted them all too!  Not one could make her appearance on the 
stage but he bought her, however expensive she might be.  Vast sums 
were quoted.  Twice had his furious appetite for courtesans ruined 
him.  The courtesans, as Vandeuvres used to say, avenged public 
morality by emptying his moneybags.  A big operation in the 
saltworks of the Landes had rendered him powerful on 'change, and so 
for six weeks past the Mignons had been getting a pretty slice out 
of those same saltworks.  But people were beginning to lay wagers 
that the Mignons would not finish their slice, for Nana was showing 
her white teeth.  Once again Steiner was in the toils, and so deeply 
this time that as he sat by Nana's side he seemed stunned; he ate 
without appetite; his lip hung down; his face was mottled.  She had 
only to name a figure.  Nevertheless, she did not hurry but 
continued playing with him, breathing her merry laughter into his 
hairy ear and enjoying the little convulsive movements which kept 
traversing his heavy face.  There would always be time enough to 
patch all that up if that ninny of a Count Muffat were really to 
treat her as Joseph did Potiphar's wife.

"Leoville or Chambertin?" murmured a waiter, who came craning 
forward between Nana and Steiner just as the latter was addressing 
her in a low voice.

"Eh, what?" he stammered, losing his head.  "Whatever you like--I 
don't care."

Vandeuvres gently nudged Lucy Stewart, who had a very spiteful 
tongue and a very fierce invention when once she was set going.  
That evening Mignon was driving her to exasperation.

"He would gladly be bottleholder, you know," she remarked to the 
count.  "He's in hopes of repeating what he did with little 
Jonquier.  You remember: Jonquier was Rose's man, but he was sweet 
on big Laure.  Now Mignon procured Laure for Jonquier and then came 
back arm in arm with him to Rose, as if he were a husband who had 
been allowed a little peccadillo.  But this time the thing's going 
to fail.  Nana doesn't give up the men who are lent her."

"What ails Mignon that he should be looking at his wife in that 
severe way?" asked Vandeuvres.

He leaned forward and saw Rose growing exceedingly amorous toward 
Fauchery.  This was the explanation of his neighbor's wrath.  He 
resumed laughingly:

"The devil, are you jealous?"

"Jealous!" said Lucy in a fury.  "Good gracious, if Rose is wanting 
Leon I give him up willingly--for what he's worth!  That's to say, 
for a bouquet a week and the rest to match!  Look here, my dear boy, 
these theatrical trollops are all made the same way.  Why, Rose 
cried with rage when she read Leon's article on Nana; I know she 
did.  So now, you understand, she must have an article, too, and 
she's gaining it.  As for me, I'm going to chuck Leon downstairs--
you'll see!"

She paused to say "Leoville" to the waiter standing behind her with 
his two bottles and then resumed in lowered tones:

"I don't want to shout; it isn't my style.  But she's a cocky slut 
all the same.  If I were in her husband's place I should lead her a 
lovely dance.  Oh, she won't be very happy over it.  She doesn't 
know my Fauchery: a dirty gent he is, too, palling up with women 
like that so as to get on in the world.  Oh, a nice lot they are!"

Vandeuvres did his best to calm her down, but Bordenave, deserted by 
Rose and by Lucy, grew angry and cried out that they were letting 
Papa perish of hunger and thirst.  This produced a fortunate 
diversion.  Yet the supper was flagging; no one was eating now, 
though platefuls of cepes a' l'italienne and pineapple fritters a la 
Pompadour were being mangled.  The champagne, however, which had 
been drunk ever since the soup course, was beginning little by 
little to warm the guests into a state of nervous exaltation.  They 
ended by paying less attention to decorum than before.  The women 
began leaning on their elbows amid the disordered table 
arrangements, while the men, in order to breathe more easily, pushed 
their chairs back, and soon the black coats appeared buried between 
the light-colored bodices, and bare shoulders, half turned toward 
the table, began to gleam as soft as silk.  It was too hot, and the 
glare of the candles above the table grew ever yellower and duller.  
Now and again, when a women bent forward, the back of her neck 
glowed golden under a rain of curls, and the glitter of a diamond 
clasp lit up a lofty chignon.  There was a touch of fire in the 
passing jests, in the laughing eyes, in the sudden gleam of white 
teeth, in the reflection of the candelabra on the surface of a glass 
of champagne.  The company joked at the tops of their voices, 
gesticulated, asked questions which no one answered and called to 
one another across the whole length of the room.  But the loudest 
din was made by the waiters; they fancied themselves at home in the 
corridors of their parent restaurant; they jostled one another and 
served the ices and the dessert to an accompaniment of guttural 
exclamations.

"My children," shouted Bordenave, "you know we're playing tomorrow.  
Be careful!  Not too much champagne!"

"As far as I'm concerned," said Foucarmont, "I've drunk every 
imaginable kind of wine in all the four quarters of the globe.  
Extraordinary liquors some of 'em, containing alcohol enough to kill 
a corpse!  Well, and what d'you think?  Why, it never hurt me a bit.  
I can't make myself drunk.  I've tried and I can't."

He was very pale, very calm and collected, and he lolled back in his 
chair, drinking without cessation.

"Never mind that," murmured Louise Violaine.  "Leave off; you've had 
enough.  It would be a funny business if I had to look after you the 
rest of the night."

Such was her state of exaltation that Lucy Stewart's cheeks were 
assuming a red, consumptive flush, while Rose Mignon with moist 
eyelids was growing excessively melting.  Tatan Nene, greatly 
astonished at the thought that she had overeaten herself, was 
laughing vaguely over her own stupidity.  The others, such as 
Blanche, Caroline, Simonne and Maria, were all talking at once and 
telling each other about their private affairs--about a dispute with 
a coachman, a projected picnic and innumerable complex stories of 
lovers stolen or restored.  Meanwhile a young man near Georges, 
having evinced a desire to kiss Lea de Horn, received a sharp rap, 
accompanied by a "Look here, you, let me go!" which was spoken in a 
tone of fine indignation; and Georges, who was now very tipsy and 
greatly excited by the sight of Nana, hesitated about carrying out a 
project which he had been gravely maturing.  He had been planning, 
indeed, to get under the table on all fours and to go and crouch at 
Nana's feet like a little dog.  Nobody would have seen him, and he 
would have stayed there in the quietest way.  But when at Lea's 
urgent request Daguenet had told the young man to sit still, Georges 
all at once felt grievously chagrined, as though the reproof had 
just been leveled at him.  Oh, it was all silly and slow, and there 
was nothing worth living for!  Daguenet, nevertheless, began 
chaffing and obliged him to swallow a big glassful of water, asking 
him at the same time what he would do if he were to find himself 
alone with a woman, seeing that three glasses of champagne were able 
to bowl him over.

"Why, in Havana," resumed Foucarmont, "they make a spirit with a 
certain wild berry; you think you're swallowing fire!  Well now, one 
evening I drank more than a liter of it, and it didn't hurt me one 
bit.  Better than that, another time when we were on the coast of 
Coromandel some savages gave us I don't know what sort of a mixture 
of pepper and vitriol, and that didn't hurt me one bit.  I can't 
make myself drunk."

For some moments past La Faloise's face opposite had excited his 
displeasure.  He began sneering and giving vent to disagreeable 
witticisms.  La Faloise, whose brain was in a whirl, was behaving 
very restlessly and squeezing up against Gaga.  But at length he 
became the victim of anxiety; somebody had just taken his 
handkerchief, and with drunken obstinacy he demanded it back again, 
asked his neighbors about it, stooped down in order to look under 
the chairs and the guests' feet.  And when Gaga did her best to 
quiet him:

"It's a nuisance," he murmured, "my initials and my coronet are 
worked in the corner.  They may compromise me."

"I say, Monsieur Falamoise, Lamafoise, Mafaloise!" shouted 
Foucarmont, who thought it exceedingly witty thus to disfigure the 
young man's name ad infinitum.

But La Faloise grew wroth and talked with a stutter about his 
ancestry.  He threatened to send a water bottle at Foucarmont's 
head, and Count de Vandeuvres had to interfere in order to assure 
him that Foucarmont was a great joker.  Indeed, everybody was 
laughing.  This did for the already flurried young man, who was very 
glad to resume his seat and to begin eating with childlike 
submissiveness when in a loud voice his cousin ordered him to feed.  
Gaga had taken him back to her ample side; only from time to time he 
cast sly and anxious glances at the guests, for he ceased not to 
search for his handkerchief.

Then Foucarmont, being now in his witty vein, attacked Labordette 
right at the other end of the table.  Louise Violaine strove to make 
him hold his tongue, for, she said, "when he goes nagging at other 
people like that it always ends in mischief for me."  He had 
discovered a witticism which consisted in addressing Labordette as 
"Madame," and it must have amused him greatly, for he kept on 
repeating it while Labordette tranquilly shrugged his shoulders and 
as constantly replied:

"Pray hold your tongue, my dear fellow; it's stupid."

But as Foucarmont failed to desist and even became insulting without 
his neighbors knowing why, he left off answering him and appealed to 
Count Vandeuvres.

"Make your friend hold his tongue, monsieur.  I don't wish to become 
angry."

Foucarmont had twice fought duels, and he was in consequence most 
politely treated and admitted into every circle.  But there was now 
a general uprising against him.  The table grew merry at his 
sallies, for they thought him very witty, but that was no reason why 
the evening should be spoiled.  Vandeuvres, whose subtle countenance 
was darkening visibly, insisted on his restoring Labordette his sex.  
The other men--Mignon, Steiner and Bordenave--who were by this time 
much exalted, also intervened with shouts which drowned his voice.  
Only the old gentleman sitting forgotten next to Nana retained his 
stately demeanor and, still smiling in his tired, silent way, 
watched with lackluster eyes the untoward finish of the dessert.

"What do you say to our taking coffee in here, duckie?" said 
Bordenave.  "We're very comfortable."

Nana did not give an immediate reply.  Since the beginning of supper 
she had seemed no longer in her own house.  All this company had 
overwhelmed and bewildered her with their shouts to the waiters, the 
loudness of their voices and the way in which they put themselves at 
their ease, just as though they were in a restaurant.  Forgetting 
her role of hostess, she busied herself exclusively with bulky 
Steiner, who was verging on apoplexy beside her.  She was listening 
to his proposals and continually refusing them with shakes of the 
head and that temptress's laughter which is peculiar to a voluptuous 
blonde.  The champagne she had been drinking had flushed her a rosy-
red; her lips were moist; her eyes sparkled, and the banker's offers 
rose with every kittenish movement of her shoulders, with every 
little voluptuous lift and fall of her throat, which occurred when 
she turned her head.  Close by her ear he kept espying a sweet 
little satiny corner which drove him crazy.  Occasionally Nana was 
interrupted, and then, remembering her guests, she would try and be 
as pleased as possible in order to show that she knew how to 
receive.  Toward the end of the supper she was very tipsy.  It made 
her miserable to think of it, but champagne had a way of 
intoxicating her almost directly!  Then an exasperating notion 
struck her.  In behaving thus improperly at her table, these ladies 
were showing themselves anxious to do her an ugly turn.  Oh yes, she 
could see it all distinctly.  Lucy had given Foucarmont a wink in 
order to egg him on against Labordette, while Rose, Caroline and the 
others were doing all they could to stir up the men.  Now there was 
such a din you couldn't hear your neighbor speak, and so the story 
would get about that you might allow yourself every kind of liberty 
when you supped at Nana's.  Very well then!  They should see!  She 
might be tipsy, if you like, but she was still the smartest and most 
ladylike woman there.

"Do tell them to serve the coffee here, duckie," resumed Bordenave.  
"I prefer it here because of my leg."

But Nana had sprung savagely to her feet after whispering into the 
astonished ears of Steiner and the old gentleman:

"It's quite right; it'll teach me to go and invite a dirty lot like 
that."

Then she pointed to the door of the dining room and added at the top 
of her voice:

"If you want coffee it's there, you know."

The company left the table and crowded toward the dining room 
without noticing Nana's indignant outburst.  And soon no one was 
left in the drawing room save Bordenave, who advanced cautiously, 
supporting himself against the wall and cursing away at the 
confounded women who chucked Papa the moment they were chock-full.  
The waiters behind him were already busy removing the plates and 
dishes in obedience to the loudly voiced orders of the manager.  
They rushed to and fro, jostled one another, caused the whole table 
to vanish, as a pantomime property might at the sound of the chief 
scene-shifter's whistle.  The ladies and gentlemen were to return to 
the drawing room after drinking their coffee.

"By gum, it's less hot here," said Gaga with a slight shiver as she 
entered the dining room.

The window here had remained open.  Two lamps illuminated the table, 
where coffee and liqueurs were set out.  There were no chairs, and 
the guests drank their coffee standing, while the hubbub the waiters 
were making in the next room grew louder and louder.  Nana had 
disappeared, but nobody fretted about her absence.  They did without 
her excellently well, and everybody helped himself and rummaged in 
the drawers of the sideboard in search of teaspoons, which were 
lacking.  Several groups were formed; people separated during supper 
rejoined each other, and there was an interchange of glances, of 
meaning laughter and of phrases which summed up recent situations.

"Ought not Monsieur Fauchery to come and lunch with us one of these 
days, Auguste?" said Rose Mignon.

Mignon, who was toying with his watch chain, eyed the journalist for 
a second or two with his severe glance.  Rose was out of her senses.  
As became a good manager, he would put a stop to such spendthrift 
courses.  In return for a notice, well and good, but afterward, 
decidedly not.  Nevertheless, as he was fully aware of his wife's 
wrongheadedness and as he made it a rule to wink paternally at a 
folly now and again, when such was necessary, he answered amiably 
enough:

"Certainly, I shall be most happy.  Pray come tomorrow, Monsieur 
Fauchery."

Lucy Stewart heard this invitation given while she was talking with 
Steiner and Blanche and, raising her voice, she remarked to the 
banker:

"It's a mania they've all of them got.  One of them even went so far 
as to steal my dog.  Now, dear boy, am I to blame if you chuck her?"

Rose turned round.  She was very pale and gazed fixedly at Steiner 
as she sipped her coffee.  And then all the concentrated anger she 
felt at his abandonment of her flamed out in her eyes.  She saw more 
clearly than Mignon; it was stupid in him to have wished to begin 
the Jonquier ruse a second time--those dodgers never succeeded twice 
running.  Well, so much the worse for him!  She would have Fauchery!  
She had been getting enamored of him since the beginning of supper, 
and if Mignon was not pleased it would teach him greater wisdom!

"You are not going to fight?" said Vandeuvres, coming over to Lucy 
Stewart.

"No, don't be afraid of that!  Only she must mind and keep quiet, or 
I let the cat out of the bag!"

Then signing imperiously to Fauchery:

"I've got your slippers at home, my little man.  I'll get them taken 
to your porter's lodge for you tomorrow."

He wanted to joke about it, but she swept off, looking like a queen.  
Clarisse, who had propped herself against a wall in order to drink a 
quiet glass of kirsch, was seen to shrug her shoulders.  A pleasant 
business for a man!  Wasn't it true that the moment two women were 
together in the presence of their lovers their first idea was to do 
one another out of them?  It was a law of nature!  As to herself, 
why, in heaven's name, if she had wanted to she would have torn out 
Gaga's eyes on Hector's account!  But la, she despised him!  Then as 
La Faloise passed by, she contented herself by remarking to him:

"Listen, my friend, you like 'em well advanced, you do!  You don't 
want 'em ripe; you want 'em mildewed!"

La Faloise seemed much annoyed and not a little anxious.  Seeing 
Clarisse making game of him, he grew suspicious of her.

"No humbug, I say," he muttered.  "You've taken my handkerchief.  
Well then, give it back!"

"He's dreeing us with that handkerchief of his!" she cried.  "Why, 
you ass, why should I have taken it from you?"

"Why should you?" he said suspiciously.  "Why, that you may send it 
to my people and compromise me."

In the meantime Foucarmont was diligently attacking the liqueurs.  
He continued to gaze sneeringly at Labordette, who was drinking his 
coffee in the midst of the ladies.  And occasionally he gave vent to 
fragmentary assertions, as thus: "He's the son of a horse dealer; 
some say the illegitimate child of a countess.  Never a penny of 
income, yet always got twenty-five louis in his pocket!  Footboy to 
the ladies of the town!  A big lubber, who never goes with any of 
'em!  Never, never, never!" he repeated, growing furious.  "No, by 
Jove!  I must box his ears."

He drained a glass of chartreuse.  The chartreuse had not the 
slightest effect upon him; it didn't affect him "even to that 
extent," and he clicked his thumbnail against the edge of his teeth.  
But suddenly, just as he was advancing upon Labordette, he grew ashy 
white and fell down in a heap in front of the sideboard.  He was 
dead drunk.  Louise Violaine was beside herself.  She had been quite 
right to prophesy that matters would end badly, and now she would 
have her work cut out for the remainder of the night.  Gaga 
reassured her.  She examined the officer with the eye of a woman of 
experience and declared that there was nothing much the matter and 
that the gentleman would sleep like that for at least a dozen or 
fifteen hours without any serious consequences.  Foucarmont was 
carried off.

"Well, where's Nana gone to?" asked Vandeuvres.

Yes, she had certainly flown away somewhere on leaving the table.  
The company suddenly recollected her, and everybody asked for her.  
Steiner, who for some seconds had been uneasy on her account, asked 
Vandeuvres about the old gentleman, for he, too, had disappeared.  
But the count reassured him--he had just brought the old gentleman 
back.  He was a stranger, whose name it was useless to mention.  
Suffice it to say that he was a very rich man who was quite pleased 
to pay for suppers!  Then as Nana was once more being forgotten, 
Vandeuvres saw Daguenet looking out of an open door and beckoning to 
him.  And in the bedroom he found the mistress of the house sitting 
up, white-lipped and rigid, while Daguenet and Georges stood gazing 
at her with an alarmed expression.

"What IS the matter with you?" he asked in some surprise.

She neither answered nor turned her head, and he repeated his 
question.

"Why, this is what's the matter with me," she cried out at length; 
"I won't let them make bloody sport of me!"

Thereupon she gave vent to any expression that occurred to her.  
Yes, oh yes, SHE wasn't a ninny--she could see clearly enough.  They 
had been making devilish light of her during supper and saying all 
sorts of frightful things to show that they thought nothing of her!  
A pack of sluts who weren't fit to black her boots!  Catch her 
bothering herself again just to be badgered for it after!  She 
really didn't know what kept her from chucking all that dirty lot 
out of the house!  And with this, rage choked her and her voice 
broke down in sobs.

"Come, come, my lass, you're drunk," said Vandeuvres, growing 
familiar.  "You must be reasonable."

No, she would give her refusal now; she would stay where she was.

"I am drunk--it's quite likely!  But I want people to respect me!"

For a quarter of an hour past Daguenet and Georges had been vainly 
beseeching her to return to the drawing room.  She was obstinate, 
however; her guests might do what they liked; she despised them too 
much to come back among them.

No, she never would, never.  They might tear her in pieces before 
she would leave her room!

"I ought to have had my suspicions," she resumed.

"It's that cat of a Rose who's got the plot up!  I'm certain Rose'll 
have stopped that respectable woman coming whom I was expecting 
tonight."

She referred to Mme Robert.  Vandeuvres gave her his word of honor 
that Mme Robert had given a spontaneous refusal.  He listened and he 
argued with much gravity, for he was well accustomed to similar 
scenes and knew how women in such a state ought to be treated.  But 
the moment he tried to take hold of her hands in order to lift her 
up from her chair and draw her away with him she struggled free of 
his clasp, and her wrath redoubled.  Now, just look at that!  They 
would never get her to believe that Fauchery had not put the Count 
Muffat off coming!  A regular snake was that Fauchery, an envious 
sort, a fellow capable of growing mad against a woman and of 
destroying her whole happiness.  For she knew this--the count had 
become madly devoted to her!  She could have had him!

"Him, my dear, never!" cried Vandeuvres, forgetting himself and 
laughing loud.

"Why not?" she asked, looking serious and slightly sobered.

"Because he's thoroughly in the hands of the priests, and if he were 
only to touch you with the tips of his fingers he would go and 
confess it the day after.  Now listen to a bit of good advice.  
Don't let the other man escape you!"

She was silent and thoughtful for a moment or two.  Then she got up 
and went and bathed her eyes.  Yet when they wanted to take her into 
the dining room she still shouted "No!" furiously.  Vandeuvres left 
the bedroom, smiling and without further pressing her, and the 
moment he was gone she had an access of melting tenderness, threw 
herself into Daguenet's arms and cried out:

"Ah, my sweetie, there's only you in the world.  I love you!  YES, I 
love you from the bottom of my heart!  Oh, it would be too nice if 
we could always live together.  My God!  How unfortunate women are!"

Then her eye fell upon Georges, who, seeing them kiss, was growing 
very red, and she kissed him too.  Sweetie could not be jealous of a 
baby!  She wanted Paul and Georges always to agree, because it would 
be so nice for them all three to stay like that, knowing all the 
time that they loved one another very much.  But an extraordinary 
noise disturbed them: someone was snoring in the room.  Whereupon 
after some searching they perceived Bordenave, who, since taking his 
coffee, must have comfortably installed himself there.  He was 
sleeping on two chairs, his head propped on the edge of the bed and 
his leg stretched out in front.  Nana thought him so funny with his 
open mouth and his nose moving with each successive snore that she 
was shaken with a mad fit of laughter.  She left the room, followed 
by Daguenet and Georges, crossed the dining room, entered the 
drawing room, her merriment increasing at every step.

"Oh, my dear, you've no idea!" she cried, almost throwing herself 
into Rose's arms.  "Come and see it."

All the women had to follow her.  She took their hands coaxingly and 
drew them along with her willy-nilly, accompanying her action with 
so frank an outburst of mirth that they all of them began laughing 
on trust.  The band vanished and returned after standing 
breathlessly for a second or two round Bordenave's lordly, 
outstretched form.  And then there was a burst of laughter, and when 
one of them told the rest to be quiet Bordenave's distant snorings 
became audible.

It was close on four o'clock.  In the dining room a card table had 
just been set out, at which Vandeuvres, Steiner, Mignon and 
Labordette had taken their seats.  Behind them Lucy and Caroline 
stood making bets, while Blanche, nodding with sleep and 
dissatisfied about her night, kept asking Vandeuvres at intervals of 
five minutes if they weren't going soon.  In the drawing room there 
was an attempt at dancing.  Daguenet was at the piano or "chest of 
drawers," as Nana called it.  She did not want a "thumper," for Mimi 
would play as many waltzes and polkas as the company desired.  But 
the dance was languishing, and the ladies were chatting drowsily 
together in the corners of sofas.  Suddenly, however, there was an 
outburst of noise.  A band of eleven young men had arrived and were 
laughing loudly in the anteroom and crowding to the drawing room.  
They had just come from the ball at the Ministry of the Interior and 
were in evening dress and wore various unknown orders.  Nana was 
annoyed at this riotous entry, called to the waiters who still 
remained in the kitchen and ordered them to throw these individuals 
out of doors.  She vowed that she had never seen any of them before.  
Fauchery, Labordette, Daguenet and the rest of the men had all come 
forward in order to enforce respectful behavior toward their 
hostess.  Big words flew about; arms were outstretched, and for some 
seconds a general exchange of fisticuffs was imminent.  
Notwithstanding this, however, a little sickly looking light-haired 
man kept insistently repeating:

"Come, come, Nana, you saw us the other evening at Peters' in the 
great red saloon!  Pray remember, you invited us."

The other evening at Peters'?  She did not remember it all.  To 
begin with, what evening?

And when the little light-haired man had mentioned the day, which 
was Wednesday, she distinctly remembered having supped at Peters' on 
the Wednesday, but she had given no invitation to anyone; she was 
almost sure of that.

"However, suppose you HAVE invited them, my good girl," murmured 
Labordette, who was beginning to have his doubts.  "Perhaps you were 
a little elevated."

Then Nana fell a-laughing.  It was quite possible; she really didn't 
know.  So then, since these gentlemen were on the spot, they had her 
leave to come in.  Everything was quietly arranged; several of the 
newcomers found friends in the drawing room, and the scene ended in 
handshakings.  The little sickly looking light-haired man bore one 
of the greatest names in France.  Furthermore, the eleven announced 
that others were to follow them, and, in fact, the door opened every 
few moments, and men in white gloves and official garb presented 
themselves.  They were still coming from the ball at the Ministry.  
Fauchery jestingly inquired whether the minister was not coming, 
too, but Nana answered in a huff that the minister went to the 
houses of people she didn't care a pin for.  What she did not say 
was that she was possessed with a hope of seeing Count Muffat enter 
her room among all that stream of people.  He might quite have 
reconsidered his decision, and so while talking to Rose she kept a 
sharp eye on the door.

Five o'clock struck.  The dancing had ceased, and the cardplayers 
alone persisted in their game.  Labordette had vacated his seat, and 
the women had returned into the drawing room.  The air there was 
heavy with the somnolence which accompanies a long vigil, and the 
lamps cast a wavering light while their burned-out wicks glowed red 
within their globes.  The ladies had reached that vaguely melancholy 
hour when they felt it necessary to tell each other their histories.  
Blanche de Sivry spoke of her grandfather, the general, while 
Clarisse invented a romantic story about a duke seducing her at her 
uncle's house, whither he used to come for the boar hunting.  Both 
women, looking different ways, kept shrugging their shoulders and 
asking themselves how the deuce the other could tell such whoppers!  
As to Lucy Stewart, she quietly confessed to her origin and of her 
own accord spoke of her childhood and of the days when her father, 
the wheel greaser at the Northern Railway Terminus, used to treat 
her to an apple puff on Sundays.

"Oh, I must tell you about it!" cried the little Maria Blond 
abruptly.  "Opposite to me there lives a gentleman, a Russian, an 
awfully rich man!  Well, just fancy, yesterday I received a basket 
of fruit--oh, it just was a basket!  Enormous peaches, grapes as big 
as that, simply wonderful for the time of year!  And in the middle 
of them six thousand-franc notes!  It was the Russian's doing.  Of 
course I sent the whole thing back again, but I must say my heart 
ached a little--when I thought of the fruit!"

The ladies looked at one another and pursed up their lips.  At her 
age little Maria Blond had a pretty cheek!  Besides, to think that 
such things should happen to trollops like her!  Infinite was their 
contempt for her among themselves.  It was Lucy of whom they were 
particularly jealous, for they were beside themselves at the thought 
of her three princes.  Since Lucy had begnn taking a daily morning 
ride in the Bois they all had become Amazons, as though a mania 
possessed them.

Day was about to dawn, and Nana turned her eyes away from the door, 
for she was relinquishing all hope.  The company were bored to 
distraction.  Rose Mignon had refused to sing the "Slipper" and sat 
huddled up on a sofa, chatting in a low voice with Fauchery and 
waiting for Mignon, who had by now won some fifty louis from 
Vandeuvres.  A fat gentleman with a decoration and a serious cast of 
countenance had certainly given a recitation in Alsatian accents of 
"Abraham's Sacrifice," a piece in which the Almighty says, "By My 
blasted Name" when He swears, and Isaac always answers with a "Yes, 
Papa!"  Nobody, however, understood what it was all about, and the 
piece had been voted stupid.  People were at their wits' end how to 
make merry and to finish the night with fitting hilarity.  For a 
moment or two Labordette conceived the idea of denouncing different 
women in a whisper to La Faloise, who still went prowling round each 
individual lady, looking to see if she were hiding his handkerchief 
in her bosom.  Soon, as there were still some bottles of champagne 
on the sideboard, the young men again fell to drinking.  They 
shouted to one another; they stirred each other up, but a dreary 
species of intoxication, which was stupid enough to drive one to 
despair, began to overcome the company beyond hope of recovery.  
Then the little fair-haired fellow, the man who bore one of the 
greatest names in France and had reached his wit's end and was 
desperate at the thought that he could not hit upon something really 
funny, conceived a brilliant notion: he snatched up his bottle of 
champagne and poured its contents into the piano.  His allies were 
convulsed with laughter.

"La now!  Why's he putting champagne into the piano?" asked Tatan 
Nene in great astonishment as she caught sight of him.

"What, my lass, you don't know why he's doing that?" replied 
Labordette solemnly.  "There's nothing so good as champagne for 
pianos.  It gives 'em tone."

"Ah," murmured Tatan Nene with conviction.

And when the rest began laughing at her she grew angry.  How should 
she know?  They were always confusing her.

Decidedly the evening was becoming a big failure.  The night 
threatened to end in the unloveliest way.  In a corner by themselves 
Maria Blond and Lea de Horn had begun squabbling at close quarters, 
the former accusing the latter of consorting with people of 
insufficient wealth.  They were getting vastly abusive over it, 
their chief stumbling block being the good looks of the men in 
question.  Lucy, who was plain, got them to hold their tongues.  
Good looks were nothing, according to her; good figures were what 
was wanted.  Farther off, on a sofa, an attache had slipped his arm 
round Simonne's waist and was trying to kiss her neck, but Simonne, 
sullen and thoroughly out of sorts, pushed him away at every fresh 
attempt with cries of "You're pestering me!" and sound slaps of the 
fan across his face.  For the matter of that, not one of the ladies 
allowed herself to be touched.  Did people take them for light 
women?  Gaga, in the meantime, had once more caught La Faloise and 
had almost hoisted him upon her knees while Clarisse was 
disappearing from view between two gentlemen, shaking with nervous 
laughter as women will when they are tickled.  Round about the piano 
they were still busy with their little game, for they were suffering 
from a fit of stupid imbecillty, which caused each man to jostle his 
fellow in his frantic desire to empty his bottle into the 
instrument.  It was a simple process and a charming one.

"Now then, old boy, drink a glass!  Devil take it, he's a thirsty 
piano!  Hi!  'Tenshun!  Here's another bottle!  You mustn't lose a 
drop!"

Nana's back was turned, and she did not see them.  Emphatically she 
was now falling back on the bulky Steiner, who was seated next to 
her.  So much the worse!  It was all on account of that Muffat, who 
had refused what was offered him.  Sitting there in her white 
foulard dress, which was as light and full of folds as a shift, 
sitting there with drooped eyelids and cheeks pale with the touch of 
intoxication from which she was suffering, she offered herself to 
him with that quiet expression which is peculiar to a good-natured 
courtesan.  The roses in her hair and at her throat had lost their 
leaves, and their stalks alone remained.  Presently Steiner withdrew 
his hand quickly from the folds of her skirt, where he had come in 
contact with the pins that Georges had stuck there.  Some drops of 
blood appeared on his fingers, and one fell on Nana's dress and 
stained it.

"Now the bargain's struck," said Nana gravely.

The day was breaking apace.  An uncertain glimmer of light, fraught 
with a poignant melancholy, came stealing through the windows.  And 
with that the guests began to take their departure.  It was a most 
sour and uncomfortable retreat.  Caroline Hequet, annoyed at the 
loss of her night, announced that it was high time to be off unless 
you were anxious to assist at some pretty scenes.  Rose pouted as if 
her womanly character had been compromised.  It was always so with 
these girls; they didn't know how to behave and were guilty of 
disgusting conduct when they made their first appearance in society!  
And Mignon having cleaned Vandeuvres out completely, the family took 
their departure.  They did not trouble about Steiner but renewed 
their invitation for tomorrow to Fauchery.  Lucy thereupon refused 
the journalist's escort home and sent him back shrilly to his 
"strolling actress."  At this Rose turned round immediately and 
hissed out a "Dirty sow" by way of answer.  But Mignon, who in 
feminine quarrels was always paternal, for his experience was a long 
one and rendered him superior to them, had already pushed her out of 
the house, telling her at the same time to have done.  Lucy came 
downstairs in solitary state behind them.  After which Gaga had to 
carry off La Faloise, ill, sobbing like a child, calling after 
Clarisse, who had long since gone off with her two gentlemen.  
Simonne, too, had vanished.  Indeed, none remained save Tatan, Lea 
and Maria, whom Labordette complaisantly took under his charge.

"Oh, but I don't the least bit want to go to bed!" said Nana.  "One 
ought to find something to do."

She looked at the sky through the windowpanes.  It was a livid sky, 
and sooty clouds were scudding across it.  It was six o'clock in the 
morning.  Over the way, on the opposite side of the Boulevard 
Haussmann, the glistening roofs of the still-slumbering houses were 
sharply outlined against the twilight sky while along the deserted 
roadway a gang of street sweepers passed with a clatter of wooden 
shoes.  As she viewed Paris thus grimly awakening, she was overcome 
by tender, girlish feelings, by a yearning for the country, for 
idyllic scenes, for things soft and white.

"Now guess what you're to do," she said, coming back to Steiner.  
"You're going to take me to the Bois de Boulogne, and we'll drink 
milk there."

She clapped her hands in childish glee.  Without waiting for the 
banker's reply--he naturally consented, though he was really rather 
bored and inclined to think of other things--she ran off to throw a 
pelisse over her shoulders.  In the drawing room there was now no 
one with Steiner save the band of young men.  These had by this time 
dropped the very dregs of their glasses into the piano and were 
talking of going, when one of their number ran in triumphantly.  He 
held in his hands a last remaining bottle, which he had brought back 
with him from the pantry.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute!" he shouted.  "Here's a bottle of 
chartreuse; that'll pick him up!  And now, my young friends, let's 
hook it.  We're blooming idiots."

In the dressing room Nana was compelled to wake up Zoe, who had 
dozed off on a chair.  The gas was still alight, and Zoe shivered as 
she helped her mistress on with her hat and pelisse.

"Well, it's over; I've done what you wanted me to," said Nana, 
speaking familiarly to the maid in a sudden burst of expansive 
confidence and much relieved at the thought that she had at last 
made her election.  "You were quite right; the banker's as good as 
another."

The maid was cross, for she was still heavy with sleep.  She 
grumbled something to the effect that Madame ought to have come to a 
decision the first evening.  Then following her into the bedroom, 
she asked what she was going to do with "those two," meaning 
Bordenave, who was snoring away as usual, and Georges, who had 
slipped in slyly, buried his head in a pillow and, finally falling 
asleep there, was now breathing as lightly and regularly as a 
cherub.  Nana in reply told her that she was to let them sleep on.  
But seeing Daguenet come into the room, she again grew tender.  He 
had been watching her from the kitchen and was looking very 
wretched.

"Come, my sweetie, be reasonable," she said, taking him in her arms 
and kissing him with all sorts of little wheedling caresses.  
"Nothing's changed; you know that it's sweetie whom I always adore!  
Eh, dear?  I had to do it.  Why, I swear to you we shall have even 
nicer times now.  Come tomorrow, and we'll arrange about hours.  Now 
be quick, kiss and hug me as you love me.  Oh, tighter, tighter than 
that!"

And she escaped and rejoined Steiner, feeling happy and once more 
possessed with the idea of drinking milk.  In the empty room the 
Count de Vandeuvres was left alone with the "decorated" man who had 
recited "Abraham's Sacrifice."  Both seemed glued to the card table; 
they had lost count of their whereabouts and never once noticed the 
broad light of day without, while Blanche had made bold to put her 
feet up on a sofa in order to try and get a little sleep.

"Oh, Blanche is with them!" cried Nana.  "We are going to drink 
milk, dear.  Do come; you'll find Vandeuvres here when we return."

Blanche got up lazily.  This time the banker's fiery face grew white 
with annoyance at the idea of having to take that big wench with him 
too.  She was certain to bore him.  But the two women had already 
got him by the arms and were reiterating:

"We want them to milk the cow before our eyes, you know."



CHAPTER V


At the Varietes they were giving the thirty-fourth performance of 
the Blonde Venus.  The first act had just finished, and in the 
greenroom Simonne, dressed as the little laundress, was standing in 
front of a console table, surmounted by a looking glass and situated 
between the two corner doors which opened obliquely on the end of 
the dressing-room passage.  No one was with her, and she was 
scrutinizing her face and rubbing her finger up and down below her 
eyes with a view to putting the finishing touches to her make-up.  
The gas jets on either side of the mirror flooded her with warm, 
crude light.

"Has he arrived?" asked Prulliere, entering the room in his Alpine 
admiral's costume, which was set off by a big sword, enormous top 
boots and a vast tuft of plumes.

"Who d'you mean?" said Simonne, taking no notice of him and laughing 
into the mirror in order to see how her lips looked.

"The prince."

"I don't know; I've just come down.  Oh, he's certainly due here 
tonight; he comes every time!"

Prulliere had drawn near the hearth opposite the console table, 
where a coke fire was blazing and two more gas jets were flaring 
brightly.  He lifted his eyes and looked at the clock and the 
barometer on his right hand and on his left.  They had gilded 
sphinxes by way of adornment in the style of the First Empire.  Then 
he stretched himself out in a huge armchair with ears, the green 
velvet of which had been so worn by four generations of comedians 
that it looked yellow in places, and there he stayed, with moveless 
limbs and vacant eyes, in that weary and resigned attitude peculiar 
to actors who are used to long waits before their turn for going on 
the stage.

Old Bosc, too, had just made his appearance.  He came in dragging 
one foot behind the other and coughing.  He was wrapped in an old 
box coat, part of which had slipped from his shoulder in such a way 
as to uncover the gold-laced cloak of King Dagobert.  He put his 
crown on the piano and for a moment or two stood moodily stamping 
his feet.  His hands were trembling slightly with the first 
beginnings of alcoholism, but he looked a sterling old fellow for 
all that, and a long white beard lent that fiery tippler's face of 
his a truly venerable appearance.  Then in the silence of the room, 
while the shower of hail was whipping the panes of the great window 
that looked out on the courtyard, he shook himself disgustedly.

"What filthy weather!" he growled.

Simonne and Prulliere did not move.  Four or five pictures--a 
landscape, a portrait of the actor Vernet--hung yellowing in the hot 
glare of the gas, and a bust of Potier, one of the bygone glories of 
the Varietes, stood gazing vacant-eyed from its pedestal.  But just 
then there was a burst of voices outside.  It was Fontan, dressed 
for the second act.  He was a young dandy, and his habiliments, even 
to his gloves, were entirely yellow.

"Now say you don't know!" he shouted, gesticulating.  "Today's my 
patron saint's day!"

"What?" asked Simonne, coming up smilingly, as though attracted by 
the huge nose and the vast, comic mouth of the man.  "D'you answer 
to the name of Achille?"

"Exactly so!  And I'm going to get 'em to tell Madame Bron to send 
up champagne after the second act."

For some seconds a bell had been ringing in the distance.  The long-
drawn sound grew fainter, then louder, and when the bell ceased a 
shout ran up the stair and down it till it was lost along the 
passages.  "All on the stage for the second act!  All on the stage 
for the second act!"  The sound drew near, and a little pale-faced 
man passed by the greenroom doors, outside each of which he yelled 
at the top of his shrill voice, "On the stage for the second act!"

"The deuce, it's champagne!" said Prulliere without appearing to 
hear the din.  "You're prospering!"

"If I were you I should have it in from the cafe," old Bosc slowly 
announced.  He was sitting on a bench covered with green velvet, 
with his head against the wall.

But Simonne said that it was one's duty to consider Mme Bron's small 
perquisites.  She clapped her hands excitedly and devoured Fontan 
with her gaze while his long goatlike visage kept up a continuous 
twitching of eyes and nose and mouth.

"Oh, that Fontan!" she murmured.  "There's no one like him, no one 
like him!"

The two greenroom doors stood wide open to the corridor leading to 
the wings.  And along the yellow wall, which was brightly lit up by 
a gas lamp out of view, passed a string of rapidly moving shadows--
men in costume, women with shawls over their scant attire, in a 
word, the whole of the characters in the second act, who would 
shortly make their appearance as masqeuraders in the ball at the 
Boule Noire.  And at the end of the corridor became audible a 
shuffling of feet as these people clattered down the five wooden 
steps which led to the stage.  As the big Clarisse went running by 
Simonne called to her, but she said she would be back directly.  
And, indeed, she reappeared almost at once, shivering in the thin 
tunic and scarf which she wore as Iris.

"God bless me!" she said.  "It isn't warm, and I've left my furs in 
my dressing room!"

Then as she stood toasting her legs in their warm rose-colored 
tights in front of the fireplace she resumed:

"The prince has arrived."

"Oh!" cried the rest with the utmost curiosity.

"Yes, that's why I ran down: I wanted to see.  He's in the first 
stage box to the right, the same he was in on Thursday.  It's the 
third time he's been this week, eh?  That's Nana; well, she's in 
luck's way!  I was willing to wager he wouldn't come again."

Simonne opened her lips to speak, but her remarks were drowned by a 
fresh shout which arose close to the greenroom.  In the passage the 
callboy was yelling at the top of his shrill voice, "They've 
knocked!"

"Three times!" said Simonne when she was again able to speak.  "It's 
getting exciting.  You know, he won't go to her place; he takes her 
to his.  And it seems that he has to pay for it too!"

"Egad!  It's a case of when one 'has to go out,'" muttered Prulliere 
wickedly, and he got up to have a last look at the mirror as became 
a handsome fellow whom the boxes adored.

"They've knocked!  They've knocked!" the callboy kept repeating in 
tones that died gradually away in the distance as he passed through 
the various stories and corridors.

Fontan thereupon, knowing how it had all gone off on the first 
occasion the prince and Nana met, told the two women the whole story 
while they in their turn crowded against him and laughed at the tops 
of their voices whenever he stooped to whisper certain details in 
their ears.  Old Bosc had never budged an inch--he was totally 
indifferent.  That sort of thing no longer interested him now.  He 
was stroking a great tortoise-shell cat which was lying curled up on 
the bench.  He did so quite beautifully and ended by taking her in 
his arms with the tender good nature becoming a worn-out monarch.  
The cat arched its back and then, after a prolonged sniff at the big 
white beard, the gluey odor of which doubtless disgusted her, she 
turned and, curling herself up, went to sleep again on the bench 
beside him.  Bosc remained grave and absorbed.

"That's all right, but if I were you I should drink the champagne at 
the restaurant--its better there," he said, suddenly addressing 
Fontan when he had finished his recital.

"The curtain's up!" cried the callboy in cracked and long-drawn 
accents "The curtain's up!  The curtain's up!"

The shout sounded for some moments, during which there had been a 
noise of rapid footsteps.  Through the suddenly opened door of the 
passage came a burst of music and a far-off murmur of voices, and 
then the door shut to again and you could hear its dull thud as it 
wedged itself into position once more.

A heavy, peaceful, atmosphere again pervaded the greenroom, as 
though the place were situated a hundred leagues from the house 
where crowds were applauding.  Simonne and Clarisse were still on 
the topic of Nana.  There was a girl who never hurried herself!  
Why, yesterday she had again come on too late!  But there was a 
silence, for a tall damsel had just craned her head in at the door 
and, seeing that she had made a mistake, had departed to the other 
end of the passage.  It was Satin.  Wearing a hat and a small veil 
for the nonce she was affecting the manner of a lady about to pay a 
call.

"A pretty trollop!" muttered Prulliere, who had been coming across 
her for a year past at the Cafe des Varietes.  And at this Simonne 
told them how Nana had recognized in Satin an old schoolmate, had 
taken a vast fancy to her and was now plaguing Bordenave to let her 
make a first appearance on the stage.

"How d'ye do?" said Fontan, shaking hands with Mignon and Fauchery, 
who now came into the room.

Old Bosc himself gave them the tips of his fingers while the two 
women kissed Mignon.

"A good house this evening?" queried Fauchery.

"Oh, a splendid one!" replied Prulliere.  "You should see 'em 
gaping."

"I say, my little dears," remarked Mignon, "it must be your turn!"

Oh, all in good time!  They were only at the fourth scene as yet, 
but Bosc got up in obedience to instinct, as became a rattling old 
actor who felt that his cue was coming.  At that very moment the 
callboy was opening the door.

"Monsieur Bosc!" he called.  "Mademoiselle Simonne!"

Simonne flung a fur-lined pelisse briskly over her shoulders and 
went out.  Bosc, without hurrying at all, went and got his crown, 
which he settled on his brow with a rap.  Then dragging himself 
unsteadily along in his greatcoat, he took his departure, grumbling 
and looking as annoyed as a man who has been rudely disturbed.

"You were very amiable in your last notice," continued Fontan, 
addressing Fauchery.  "Only why do you say that comedians are vain?"

"Yes, my little man, why d'you say that?" shouted Mignon, bringing 
down his huge hands on the journalist's slender shoulders with such 
force as almost to double him up.

Prulliere and Clarisse refrained from laughing aloud.  For some time 
past the whole company had been deriving amusement from a comedy 
which was going on in the wings.  Mignon, rendered frantic by his 
wife's caprice and annoyed at the thought that this man Fauchery 
brought nothing but a certain doubiful notoriety to his household, 
had conceived the idea of revenging himself on the journalist by 
overwhelming him with tokens of friendship.  Every evening, 
therefore, when he met him behind scenes he would shower friendly 
slaps on his back and shoulders, as though fairly carried away by an 
outburst of tenderness, and Fauchery, who was a frail, small man in 
comparison with such a giant, was fain to take the raps with a 
strained smile in order not to quarrel with Rose's husband.

"Aha, my buck, you've insulted Fontan," resumed Mignon, who was 
doing his best to force the joke.  "Stand on guard!  One--two--got 
him right in the middle of his chest!"

He lunged and struck the young man with such force that the latter 
grew very pale and could not speak for some seconds.  With a wink 
Clarisse showed the others where Rose Mignon was standing on the 
threshold of the greenroom.  Rose had witnessed the scene, and she 
marched straight up to the journalist, as though she had failed to 
notice her husband and, standing on tiptoe, bare-armed and in baby 
costume, she held her face up to him with a caressing, infantine 
pout.

"Good evening, baby," said Fauchery, kissing her familiarly.

Thus he indemnified himself.  Mignon, however, did not seem to have 
observed this kiss, for everybody kissed his wife at the theater.  
But he laughed and gave the journalist a keen little look.  The 
latter would assurely have to pay for Rose's bravado.

In the passage the tightly shutting door opened and closed again, 
and a tempest of applause was blown as far as the greenroom.  
Simonne came in after her scene.

"Oh, Father Bosc HAS just scored!" she cried.  "The prince was 
writhing with laughter and applauded with the rest as though he had 
been paid to.  I say, do you know the big man sitting beside the 
prince in the stage box?  A handsome man, with a very sedate 
expression and splendid whiskers!"

"It's Count Muffat," replied Fauchery.  "I know that the prince, 
when he was at the empress's the day before yesterday, invited him 
to dinner for tonight.  He'll have corrupted him afterward!"

"So that's Count Muffat!  We know his father-in-law, eh, Auguste?" 
said Rose, addressing her remark to Mignon.  "You know the Marquis 
de Chouard, at whose place I went to sing?  Well, he's in the house 
too.  I noticed him at the back of a box.  There's an old boy for 
you!"

Prulliere, who had just put on his huge plume of feathers, turned 
round and called her.

"Hi, Rose!  Let's go now!"

She ran after him, leaving her sentence unfinished.  At that moment 
Mme Bron, the portress of the theater, passed by the door with an 
immense bouquet in her arms.  Simonne asked cheerfully if it was for 
her, but the porter woman did not vouchsafe an answer and only 
pointed her chin toward Nana's dressing room at the end of the 
passage.  Oh, that Nana!  They were loading her with flowers!  Then 
when Mme Bron returned she handed a letter to Clarisse, who allowed 
a smothered oath to escape her.  That beggar La Faloise again!  
There was a fellow who wouldn't let her alone!  And when she learned 
the gentleman in question was waiting for her at the porter's lodge 
she shrieked:

"Tell him I'm coming down after this act.  I'm going to catch him 
one on the face."

Fontan had rushed forward, shouting:

"Madame Bron, just listen.  Please listen, Madame Bron.  I want you 
to send up six bottles of champagne between the acts."

But the callboy had again made his appearance.  He was out of 
breath, and in a singsong voice he called out:

"All to go on the stage!  It's your turn, Monsieur Fontan.  Make 
haste, make haste!"

"Yes, yes, I'm going, Father Barillot," replied Fontan in a flurry.

And he ran after Mme Bron and continued:

"You understand, eh?  Six bottles of champagne in the greenroom 
between the acts.  It's my patron saint's day, and I'm standing the 
racket."

Simonne and Clarisse had gone off with a great rustling of skirts.  
Everybody was swallowed up in the distance, and when the passage 
door had banged with its usual hollow sound a fresh hail shower was 
heard beating against the windows in the now-silent greenroom.  
Barillot, a small, pale-faced ancient, who for thirty years had been 
a servant in the theater, had advanced familiarly toward Mignon and 
had presented his open snuffbox to him.  This proffer of a pinch and 
its acceptance allowed him a minute's rest in his interminable 
career up and down stairs and along the dressing-room passage.  He 
certainly had still to look up Mme Nana, as he called her, but she 
was one of those who followed her own sweet will and didn't care a 
pin for penalties.  Why, if she chose to be too late she was too 
late!  But he stopped short and murmured in great surprise:

"Well, I never!  She's ready; here she is!  She must know that the 
prince is here."

Indeed, Nana appeared in the corridor.  She was dressed as a fish 
hag: her arms and face were plastered with white paint, and she had 
a couple of red dabs under her eyes.  Without entering the greenroom 
she contented herself by nodding to Mignon and Fauchery.

"How do?  You're all right?"

Only Mignon shook her outstretched hand, and she hied royally on her 
way, followed by her dresser, who almost trod on her heels while 
stooping to adjust the folds of her skirt.  In the rear of the 
dresser came Satin, closing the procession and trying to look quite 
the lady, though she was already bored to death.

"And Steiner?" asked Mignon sharply.

"Monsieur Steiner has gone away to the Loiret," said Barillot, 
preparing to return to the neighborhood of the stage.  "I expect 
he's gone to buy a country place in those parts."

"Ah yes, I know, Nana's country place."

Mignon had grown suddenly serious.  Oh, that Steiner!  He had 
promised Rose a fine house in the old days!  Well, well, it wouldn't 
do to grow angry with anybody.  Here was a position that would have 
to be won again.  From fireplace to console table Mignon paced, sunk 
in thought yet still unconquered by circumstances.  There was no one 
in the greenroom now save Fauchery and himself.  The journalist was 
tired and had flung himself back into the recesses of the big 
armchair.  There he stayed with half-closed eyes and as quiet as 
quiet could be, while the other glanced down at him as he passed.  
When they were alone Mignon scorned to slap him at every turn.  What 
good would it have done, since nobody would have enjoyed the 
spectacle?  He was far too disinterested to be personally 
entertained by the farcical scenes in which he figured as a 
bantering husband.  Glad of this short-lived respite, Fauchery 
stretched his feet out languidly toward the fire and let his 
upturned eyes wander from the barometer to the clock.  In the course 
of his march Mignon planted himself in front of Potier's bust, 
looked at it without seeming to see it and then turned back to the 
window, outside which yawned the darkling gulf of the courtyard.  
The rain had ceased, and there was now a deep silence in the room, 
which the fierce heat of the coke fire and the flare of the gas jets 
rendered still more oppressive.  Not a sound came from the wings: 
the staircase and the passages were deadly still.

That choking sensation of quiet, which behind the scenes immediately 
precedes the end of an act, had begun to pervade the empty 
greenroom.  Indeed, the place seemed to be drowsing off through very 
breathlessness amid that faint murmur which the stage gives forth 
when the whole troupe are raising the deafening uproar of some grand 
finale.

"Oh, the cows!" Bordenave suddeniy shouted in his hoarse voice.

He had only just come up, and he was already howling complaints 
about two chorus girls who had nearly fallen flat on the stage 
because they were playing the fool together.  When his eye lit on 
Mignon and Fauchery he called them; he wanted to show them 
something.  The prince had just notified a desire to compliment Nana 
in her dressing room during the next interval.  But as he was 
leading them into the wings the stage manager passed.

"Just you find those hags Fernande and Maria!" cried Bordenave 
savagely.

Then calming down and endeavoring to assume the dignified expression 
worn by "heavy fathers," he wiped his face with his pocket 
handkerchief and added:

"I am now going to receive His Highness."

The curtain fell amid a long-drawn salvo of applause.  Then across 
the twilight stage, which was no longer lit up by the footlights, 
there followed a disorderly retreat.  Actors and supers and chorus 
made haste to get back to their dressing rooms while the 
sceneshifters rapidly changed the scenery.  Simonne and Clarisse, 
however, had remained "at the top," talking together in whispers.  
On the stage, in an interval between their lines, they had just 
settled a little matter.  Clarisse, after viewing the thing in every 
light, found she preferred not to see La Faloise, who could never 
decide to leave her for Gaga, and so Simonne was simply to go and 
explain that a woman ought not to be palled up to in that fashion!  
At last she agreed to undertake the mission.

Then Simonne, in her theatrical laundress's attire but with furs 
over her shoulders, ran down the greasy steps of the narrow, winding 
stairs which led between damp walls to the porter's lodge.  This 
lodge, situated between the actors' staircase and that of the 
management, was shut in to right and left by large glass partitions 
and resembled a huge transparent lantern in which two gas jets were 
flaring.

There was a set of pigeonholes in the place in which were piled 
letters and newspapers, while on the table various bouquets lay 
awaiting their recipients in close proximity to neglected heaps of 
dirty plates and to an old pair of stays, the eyelets of which the 
portress was busy mending.  And in the middle of this untidy, ill-
kept storeroom sat four fashionable, white-gloved society men.  They 
occupied as many ancient straw-bottomed chairs and, with an 
expression at once patient and submissive, kept sharply turning 
their heads in Mme Bron's direction every time she came down from 
the theater overhead, for on such occasions she was the bearer of 
replies.  Indeed, she had but now handed a note to a young man who 
had hurried out to open it beneath the gaslight in the vestibule, 
where he had grown slightly pale on reading the classic phrase--how 
often had others read it in that very place!--"Impossible tonight, 
my dearie!  I'm booked!"  La Faloise sat on one of these chairs at 
the back of the room, between the table and the stove.  He seemed 
bent on passing the evening there, and yet he was not quite happy.  
Indeed, he kept tucking up his long legs in his endeavors to escape 
from a whole litter of black kittens who were gamboling wildly round 
them while the mother cat sat bolt upright, staring at him with 
yellow eyes.

"Ah, it's you, Mademoiselle Simonne!  What can I do for you?" asked 
the portress.

Simonne begged her to send La Faloise out to her.  But Mme Bron was 
unable to comply with her wishes all at once.  Under the stairs in a 
sort of deep cupboard she kept a little bar, whither the supers were 
wont to descend for drinks between the acts, and seeing that just at 
that moment there were five or six tall lubbers there who, still 
dressed as Boule Noire masqueraders, were dying of thirst and in a 
great hurry, she lost her head a bit.  A gas jet was flaring in the 
cupboard, within which it was possible to descry a tin-covered table 
and some shelves garnished with half-emptied bottles.  Whenever the 
door of this coalhole was opened a violent whiff of alcohol mingled 
with the scent of stale cooking in the lodge, as well as with the 
penetrating scent of the flowers upon the table.

"Well now," continued the portress when she had served the supers, 
"is it the little dark chap out there you want?"

"No, no; don't be silly!" said Simonne.  "It's the lanky one by the 
side of the stove.  Your cat's sniffing at his trouser legs!"

And with that she carried La Faloise off into the lobby, while the 
other gentlemen once more resigned themselves to their fate and to 
semisuffocation and the masqueraders drank on the stairs and 
indulged in rough horseplay and guttural drunken jests.

On the stage above Bordenave was wild with the sceneshifters, who 
seemed never to have done changing scenes.  They appeared to be 
acting of set purpose--the prince would certainly have some set 
piece or other tumbling on his head.

"Up with it!  Up with it!" shouted the foreman.

At length the canvas at the back of the stage was raised into 
position, and the stage was clear.  Mignon, who had kept his eye on 
Fauchery, seized this opportunity in order to start his pummeling 
matches again.  He hugged him in his long arms and cried:

"Oh, take care!  That mast just missed crushing you!"

And he carried him off and shook him before setting him down again.  
In view of the sceneshifters' exaggerated mirth, Fauchery grew 
white.  His lips trembled, and he was ready to flare up in anger 
while Mignon, shamming good nature, was clapping him on the shoulder 
with such affectionate violence as nearly to pulverize him.

"I value your health, I do!" he kept repeating.  "Egad!  I should be 
in a pretty pickle if anything serious happened to you!"

But just then a whisper ran through their midst: "The prince!  The 
prince!  And everybody turned and looked at the little door which 
opened out of the main body of the house.  At first nothing was 
visible save Bordenave's round back and beefy neck, which bobbed 
down and arched up in a series of obsequious obeisances.  Then the 
prince made his appearance.  Largely and strongly built, light of 
beard and rosy of hue, he was not lacking in the kind of distinction 
peculiar to a sturdy man of pleasure, the square contours of whose 
limbs are clearly defined by the irreproachable cut of a frock coat.  
Behind him walked Count Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard, but this 
particular corner of the theater being dark, the group were lost to 
view amid huge moving shadows.

In order fittingly to address the son of a queen, who would someday 
occupy a throne, Bordenave had assumed the tone of a man exhibiting 
a bear in the street.  In a voice tremulous with false emotion he 
kept repeating:

"If His Highness will have the goodness to follow me--would His 
Highness deign to come this way?  His Highness will take care!"

The prince did not hurry in the least.  On the contrary, he was 
greatly interested and kept pausing in order to look at the 
sceneshifters' maneuvers.  A batten had just been lowered, and the 
group of gaslights high up among its iron crossbars illuminated the 
stage with a wide beam of light.  Muffat, who had never yet been 
behind scenes at a theater, was even more astonished than the rest.  
An uneasy feeling of mingled fear and vague repugnance took 
possession of him.  He looked up into the heights above him, where 
more battens, the gas jets on which were burning low, gleamed like 
galaxies of little bluish stars amid a chaos of iron rods, 
connecting lines of all sizes, hanging stages and canvases spread 
out in space, like huge cloths hung out to dry.

"Lower away!" shouted the foreman unexpectedly.

And the prince himself had to warn the count, for a canvas was 
descending.  They were setting the scenery for the third act, which 
was the grotto on Mount Etna.  Men were busy planting masts in the 
sockets, while others went and took frames which were leaning 
against the walls of the stage and proceeded to lash them with 
strong cords to the poles already in position.  At the back of the 
stage, with a view to producing the bright rays thrown by Vulcan's 
glowing forge, a stand had been fixed by a limelight man, who was 
now lighting various burners under red glasses.  The scene was one 
of confusion, verging to all appearances on absolute chaos, but 
every little move had been prearranged.  Nay, amid all the scurry 
the whistle blower even took a few turns, stepping short as he did 
so, in order to rest his legs.

"His Highness overwhelms me," said Bordenave, still bowing low.  
"The theater is not large, but we do what we can.  Now if His 
Highness deigns to follow me--"

Count Muffat was already making for the dressing-room passage.  The 
really sharp downward slope of the stage had surprised him 
disagreeably, and he owed no small part of his present anxiety to a 
feeling that its boards were moving under his feet.  Through the 
open sockets gas was descried burning in the "dock."  Human voices 
and blasts of air, as from a vault, came up thence, and, looking 
down into the depths of gloom, one became aware of a whole 
subterranean existence.  But just as the count was going up the 
stage a small incident occurred to stop him.  Two little women, 
dressed for the third act, were chatting by the peephole in the 
curtain.  One of them, straining forward and widening the hole with 
her fingers in order the better to observe things, was scanning the 
house beyond.

"I see him," said she sharply.  "Oh, what a mug!"

Horrified, Bordenave had much ado not to give her a kick.  But the 
prince smiled and looked pleased and excited by the remark.  He 
gazed warmly at the little woman who did not care a button for His 
Highness, and she, on her part, laughed unblushingly.  Bordenave, 
however, persuaded the prince to follow him.  Muffat was beginning 
to perspire; he had taken his hat off.  What inconvenienced him most 
was the stuffy, dense, overheated air of the place with its strong, 
haunting smell, a smell peculiar to this part of a theater, and, as 
such, compact of the reek of gas, of the glue used in the 
manufacture of the scenery, of dirty dark nooks and corners and of 
questionably clean chorus girls.  In the passage the air was still 
more suffocating, and one seemed to breathe a poisoned atmosphere, 
which was occasionally relieved by the acid scents of toilet waters 
and the perfumes of various soaps emanating from the dressing rooms.  
The count lifted his eyes as he passed and glanced up the staircase, 
for he was well-nigh startled by the keen flood of light and warmth 
which flowed down upon his back and shoulders.  High up above him 
there was a clicking of ewers and basins, a sound of laughter and of 
people calling to one another, a banging of doors, which in their 
continual opening and shutting allowed an odor of womankind to 
escape--a musky scent of oils and essences mingling with the natural 
pungency exhaled from human tresses.  He did not stop.  Nay, he 
hastened his walk: he almost ran, his skin tingling with the breath 
of that fiery approach to a world he knew nothing of.

"A theater's a curious sight, eh?" said the Marquis de Chouard with 
the enchanted expression of a man who once more finds himself amid 
familiar surroundings.

But Bordenave had at length reached Nana's dressing room at the end 
of the passage.  He quietly turned the door handle; then, cringing 
again:

"If His Highness will have the goodness to enter--"

They heard the cry of a startled woman and caught sight of Nana as, 
stripped to the waist, she slipped behind a curtain while her 
dresser, who had been in the act of drying her, stood, towel in air, 
before them.

"Oh, it IS silly to come in that way!" cried Nana from her hiding 
place.  "Don't come in; you see you mustn't come in!"

Bordenave did not seem to relish this sudden flight.

"Do stay where you were, my dear.  Why, it doesn't matter," he said.  
"It's His Highness.  Come, come, don't be childish."

And when she still refused to make her appearance--for she was 
startled as yet, though she had begun to laugh--he added in peevish, 
paternal tones:

"Good heavens, these gentlemen know perfectly well what a woman 
looks like.  They won't eat you."

"I'm not so sure of that," said the prince wittily.

With that the whole company began laughing in an exaggerated manner 
in order to pay him proper court.

"An exquisitely witty speech--an altogether Parisian speech," as 
Bordenave remarked.

Nana vouchsafed no further reply, but the curtain began moving.  
Doubtless she was making up her mind.  Then Count Muffat, with 
glowing cheeks, began to take stock of the dressing room.  It was a 
square room with a very low ceiling, and it was entirely hung with a 
light-colored Havana stuff.  A curtain of the same material depended 
from a copper rod and formed a sort of recess at the end of the 
room, while two large windows opened on the courtyard of the theater 
and were faced, at a distance of three yards at most, by a leprous-
looking wall against which the panes cast squares of yellow light 
amid the surrounding darkness.  A large dressing glass faced a white 
marble toilet table, which was garnished with a disorderly array of 
flasks and glass boxes containing oils, essences and powders.  The 
count went up to the dressing glass and discovered that he was 
looking very flushed and had small drops of perspiration on his 
forehead.  He dropped his eyes and came and took up a position in 
front of the toilet table, where the basin, full of soapy water, the 
small, scattered, ivory toilet utensils and the damp sponges, 
appeared for some moments to absorb his attention.  The feeling of 
dizziness which he had experienced when he first visited Nana in the 
Boulevard Haussmann once more overcame him.  He felt the thick 
carpet soften under foot, and the gasjets burning by the dressing 
table and by the glass seemed to shoot whistling flames about his 
temples.  For one moment, being afraid of fainting away under the 
influence of those feminine odors which he now re-encountered, 
intensified by the heat under the low-pitched ceiling, he sat down 
on the edge of a softly padded divan between the two windows.  But 
he got up again almost directly and, returning to the dressing 
table, seemed to gaze with vacant eyes into space, for he was 
thinking of a bouquet of tuberoses which had once faded in his 
bedroom and had nearly killed him in their death.  When tuberoses 
are turning brown they have a human smell.

"Make haste!" Bordenave whispered, putting his head in behind the 
curtain.

The prince, however, was listening complaisantly to the Marquis de 
Chouard, who had taken up a hare's-foot on the dressing table and 
had begun explaining the way grease paint is put on.  In a corner of 
the room Satin, with her pure, virginal face, was scanning the 
gentlemen keenly, while the dresser, Mme Jules by name, was getting 
ready Venus' tights and tunic.  Mme Jules was a woman of no age.  
She had the parchment skin and changeless features peculiar to old 
maids whom no one ever knew in their younger years.  She had indeed 
shriveled up in the burning atmosphere of the dressing rooms and 
amid the most famous thighs and bosoms in all Paris.  She wore 
everlastingly a faded black dress, and on her flat and sexless chest 
a perfect forest of pins clustered above the spot where her heart 
should have been.

"I beg your pardon, gentlemen," said Nana, drawing aside the 
curtain, "but you took me by surprise."

They all turned round.  She had not clothed herself at all, had, in 
fact, only buttoned on a little pair of linen stays which half 
revealed her bosom.  When the gentlemen had put her to flight she 
had scarcely begun undressing and was rapidly taking off her 
fishwife's costume.  Through the opening in her drawers behind a 
corner of her shift was even now visible.  There she stood, bare-
armed, bare-shouldered, bare-breasted, in all the adorable glory of 
her youth and plump, fair beauty, but she still held the curtain 
with one hand, as though ready to draw it to again upon the 
slightest provocation.

"Yes, you took me by surprise!  I never shall dare--" she stammered 
in pretty, mock confusion, while rosy blushes crossed her neck and 
shoulders and smiles of embarrassment played about her lips.

"Oh, don't apologize," cried Bordenave, "since these gentlemen 
approve of your good looks!"

But she still tried the hesitating, innocent, girlish game, and, 
shivering as though someone were tickling her, she continued:

"His Highness does me too great an honor.  I beg His Highness will 
excuse my receiving him thus--"

"It is I who am importunate," said the prince, "but, madame, I could 
not resist the desire of complimenting you."

Thereupon, in order to reach her dressing table, she walked very 
quietly and just as she was through the midst of the gentlemen, who 
made way for her to pass.

She had strongly marked hips, which filled her drawers out roundly, 
while with swelling bosom she still continued bowing and smiling her 
delicate little smile.  Suddenly she seemed to recognize Count 
Muffat, and she extended her hand to him as an old friend.  Then she 
scolded him for not having come to her supper party.  His Highness 
deigned to chaff Muffat about this, and the latter stammered and 
thrilled again at the thought that for one second he had held in his 
own feverish clasp a little fresh and perfumed hand.  The count had 
dined excellently at the prince's, who, indeed, was a heroic eater 
and drinker.  Both of them were even a little intoxicated, but they 
behaved very creditably.  To hide the commotion within him Muffat 
could only remark about the heat.

"Good heavens, how hot it is here!" he said.  "How do you manage to 
live in such a temperature, madame?"

And conversation was about to ensue on this topic when noisy voices 
were heard at the dressing-room door.  Bordenave drew back the slide 
over a grated peephole of the kind used in convents.  Fontan was 
outside with Prulliere and Bosc, and all three had bottles under 
their arms and their hands full of glasses.  He began knocking and 
shouting out that it was his patron saint's day and that he was 
standing champagne round.  Nana consulted the prince with a glance.  
Eh!  Oh dear, yes!  His Highness did not want to be in anyone's way; 
he would be only too happy!  But without waiting for permission 
Fontan came in, repeating in baby accents:

"Me not a cad, me pay for champagne!"

Then all of a sudden he became aware of the prince's presence of 
which he had been totally ignorant.  He stopped short and, assuming 
an air of farcical solemnity, announced:

"King Dagobert is in the corridor and is desirous of drinking the 
health of His Royal Highness."

The prince having made answer with a smile, Fontan's sally was voted 
charming.  But the dressing room was too small to accommodate 
everybody, and it became necessary to crowd up anyhow, Satin and Mme 
Jules standing back against the curtain at the end and the men 
clustering closely round the half-naked Nana.  The three actors 
still had on the costumes they had been wearing in the second act, 
and while Prulliere took off his Alpine admiral's cocked hat, the 
huge plume of which would have knocked the ceiling, Bosc, in his 
purple cloak and tinware crown, steadied himself on his tipsy old 
legs and greeted the prince as became a monarch receiving the son of 
a powerful neighbor.  The glasses were filled, and the company began 
clinking them together.

"I drink to Your Highness!" said ancient Bosc royally.

"To the army!" added Prulliere.

"To Venus!" cried Fontan.

The prince complaisantly poised his glass, waited quietly, bowed 
thrice and murmured:

"Madame!  Admiral!  Your Majesty!"

Then he drank it off.  Count Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard had 
followed his example.  There was no more jesting now--the company 
were at court.  Actual life was prolonged in the life of the 
theater, and a sort of solemn farce was enacted under the hot flare 
of the gas.  Nana, quite forgetting that she was in her drawers and 
that a corner of her shift stuck out behind, became the great lady, 
the queen of love, in act to open her most private palace chambers 
to state dignitaries.  In every sentence she used the words "Royal 
Highness" and, bowing with the utmost conviction, treated the 
masqueraders, Bosc and Prulliere, as if the one were a sovereign and 
the other his attendant minister.  And no one dreamed of smiling at 
this strange contrast, this real prince, this heir to a throne, 
drinking a petty actor's champagne and taking his ease amid a 
carnival of gods, a masquerade of royalty, in the society of 
dressers and courtesans, shabby players and showmen of venal beauty.  
Bordenave was simply ravished by the dramatic aspects of the scene 
and began dreaming of the receipts which would have accrued had His 
Highness only consented thus to appear in the second act of the 
Blonde Venus.

"I say, shall we have our little women down?" he cried, becoming 
familiar.

Nana would not hear of it.  But notwithstanding this, she was giving 
way herself.  Fontan attracted her with his comic make-up.  She 
brushed against him and, eying him as a woman in the family way 
might do when she fancies some unpleasant kind of food, she suddenly 
became extremely familiar:

"Now then, fill up again, ye great brute!"

Fontan charged the glasses afresh, and the company drank, repeating 
the same toasts.

"To His Highness!"

"To the army!"

"To Venus!"

But with that Nana made a sign and obtained silence.  She raised her 
glass and cried:

"No, no!  To Fontan!  It's Fontan's day; to Fontan!  To Fontan!"

Then they clinked glasses a third time and drank Fontan with all the 
honors.  The prince, who had noticed the young woman devouring the 
actor with her eyes, saluted him with a "Monsieur Fontan, I drink to 
your success!"  This he said with his customary courtesy.

But meanwhile the tail of his highness's frock coat was sweeping the 
marble of the dressing table.  The place, indeed, was like an alcove 
or narrow bathroom, full as it was of the steam of hot water and 
sponges and of the strong scent of essences which mingled with the 
tartish, intoxicating fumes of the champagne.  The prince and Count 
Muffat, between whom Nana was wedged, had to lift up their hands so 
as not to brush against her hips or her breast with every little 
movement.  And there stood Mme Jules, waiting, cool and rigid as 
ever, while Satin, marveling in the depths of her vicious soul to 
see a prince and two gentlemen in black coats going after a naked 
woman in the society of dressed-up actors, secretly concluded that 
fashionable people were not so very particular after all.

But Father Barillot's tinkling bell approached along the passage.  
At the door of the dressing room he stood amazed when he caught 
sight of the three actors still clad in the costumes which they had 
worn in the second act.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen," he stammered, "do please make haste.  
They've just rung the bell in the public foyer."

"Bah, the public will have to wait!" said Bordenave placidly.

However, as the bottles were now empty, the comedians went upstairs 
to dress after yet another interchange of civilities.  Bosc, having 
dipped his beard in the champagne, had taken it off, and under his 
venerable disguise the drunkard had suddenly reappeared.  His was 
the haggard, empurpled face of the old actor who has taken to drink.  
At the foot of the stairs he was heard remarking to Fontan in his 
boozy voice:

"I pulverized him, eh?"

He was alluding to the prince.

In Nana's dressing room none now remained save His Highness, the 
count and the marquis.  Bordenave had withdrawn with Barillot, whom 
he advised not to knock without first letting Madame know.

"You will excuse me, gentlemen?" asked Nana, again setting to work 
to make up her arms and face, of which she was now particularly 
careful, owing to her nude appearance in the third act.

The prince seated himself by the Marquis de Chouard on the divan, 
and Count Muffat alone remained standing.  In that suffocating heat 
the two glasses of champagne they had drunk had increased their 
intoxication.  Satin, when she saw the gentlemen thus closeting 
themselves with her friend, had deemed it discreet to vanish behind 
the curtain, where she sat waiting on a trunk, much annoyed at being 
compelled to remain motionless, while Mme Jules came and went 
quietly without word or look.

"You sang your numbers marvelously," said the prince.

And with that they began a conversation, but their sentences were 
short and their pauses frequent.  Nana, indeed, was not always able 
to reply.  After rubbing cold cream over her arms and face with the 
palm of her hand she laid on the grease paint with the corner of a 
towel.  For one second only she ceased looking in the glass and 
smilingly stole a glance at the prince.

"His Highness is spoiling me," she murmured without putting down the 
grease paint.

Her task was a complicated one, and the Marquis de Chouard followed 
it with an expression of devout enjoyment.  He spoke in his turn.

"Could not the band accompany you more softly?" he said.  "It drowns 
your voice, and that's an unpardonable crime."

This time Nana did not turn round.  She had taken up the hare's-foot 
and was lightly manipulating it.  All her attention was concentrated 
on this action, and she bent forward over her toilet table so very 
far that the white round contour of her drawers and the little patch 
of chemise stood out with the unwonted tension.  But she was anxious 
to prove that she appreciated the old man's compliment and therefore 
made a little swinging movement with her hips.

Silence reigned.  Mme Jules had noticed a tear in the right leg of 
her drawers.  She took a pin from over her heart and for a second or 
so knelt on the ground, busily at work about Nana's leg, while the 
young woman, without seeming to notice her presence, applied the 
rice powder, taking extreme pains as she did so, to avoid putting 
any on the upper part of her cheeks.  But when the prince remarked 
that if she were to come and sing in London all England would want 
to applaud her, she laughed amiably and turned round for a moment 
with her left cheek looking very white amid a perfect cloud of 
powder.  Then she became suddenly serious, for she had come to the 
operation of rouging.  And with her face once more close to the 
mirror, she dipped her finger in a jar and began applying the rouge 
below her eyes and gently spreading it back toward her temples.  The 
gentlemen maintained a respectful silence.

Count Muffat, indeed, had not yet opened his lips.  He was thinking 
perforce of his own youth.  The bedroom of his childish days had 
been quite cold, and later, when he had reached the age of sixteen 
and would give his mother a good-night kiss every evening, he used 
to carry the icy feeling of the embrace into the world of dreams.  
One day in passing a half-open door he had caught sight of a 
maidservant washing herself, and that was the solitary recollection 
which had in any way troubled his peace of mind from the days of 
puberty till the time of marriage.  Afterward he had found his wife 
strictly obedient to her conjugal duties but had himself felt a 
species of religious dislike to them.  He had grown to man's estate 
and was now aging, in ignorance of the flesh, in the humble 
observance of rigid devotional practices and in obedience to a rule 
of life full of precepts and moral laws.  And now suddenly he was 
dropped down in this actress's dressing room in the presence of this 
undraped courtesan.

He, who had never seen the Countess Muffat putting on her garters, 
was witnessing, amid that wild disarray of jars and basins and that 
strong, sweet perfume, the intimate details of a woman's toilet.  
His whole being was in turmoil; he was terrified by the stealthy, 
all-pervading influence which for some time past Nana's presence had 
been exercising over him, and he recalled to mind the pious accounts 
of diabolic possession which had amused his early years.  He was a 
believer in the devil, and, in a confused kind of way, Nana was he, 
with her laughter and her bosom and her hips, which seemed swollen 
with many vices.  But he promised himself that he would be strong--
nay, he would know how to defend himself.

"Well then, it's agreed," said the prince, lounging quite 
comfortably on the divan.  "You will come to London next year, and 
we shall receive you so cordially that you will never return to 
France again.  Ah, my dear Count, you don't value your pretty women 
enough.  We shall take them all from you!"

"That won't make much odds to him," murmured the Marquis de Chouard 
wickedly, for he occasionally said a risky thing among friends.  
"The count is virtue itself."

Hearing his virtue mentioned, Nana looked at him so comically that 
Muffat felt a keen twinge of annoyance.  But directly afterward he 
was surprised and angry with himself.  Why, in the presence of this 
courtesan, should the idea of being virtuous embarrass him?  He 
could have struck her.  But in attempting to take up a brush Nana 
had just let it drop on the ground, and as she stooped to pick it up 
he rushed forward.  Their breath mingled for one moment, and the 
loosened tresses of Venus flowed over his hands.  But remorse 
mingled with his enjoyment, a kind of enjoyment, moreover, peculiar 
to good Catholics, whom the fear of hell torments in the midst of 
their sin.

At this moment Father Barillot's voice was heard outside the door.

"May I give the knocks, madame?  The house is growing impatient."

"All in good time," answered Nana quietly.

She had dipped her paint brush in a pot of kohl, and with the point 
of her nose close to the glass and her left eye closed she passed it 
delicately along between her eyelashes.  Muffat stood behind her, 
looking on.  He saw her reflection in the mirror, with her rounded 
shoulders and her bosom half hidden by a rosy shadow.  And despite 
all his endeavors he could not turn away his gaze from that face so 
merry with dimples and so worn with desire, which the closed eye 
rendered more seductive.  When she shut her right eye and passed the 
brush along it he understood that he belonged to her.

"They are stamping their feet, madame," the callboy once more cried.  
"They'll end by smashing the seats.  May I give the knocks?"

"Oh, bother!" said Nana impatiently.  "Knock away; I don't care!  If 
I'm not ready, well, they'll have to wait for me!"

She grew calm again and, turning to the gentlemen, added with a 
smile:

"It's true: we've only got a minute left for our talk."

Her face and arms were now finished, and with her fingers she put 
two large dabs of carmine on her lips.  Count Muffat felt more 
excited than ever.  He was ravished by the perverse transformation 
wrought by powders and paints and filled by a lawless yearning for 
those young painted charms, for the too-red mouth and the too-white 
face and the exaggerated eyes, ringed round with black and burning 
and dying for very love.  Meanwhile Nana went behind the curtain for 
a second or two in order to take off her drawers and slip on Venus' 
tights.  After which, with tranquil immodesty, she came out and 
undid her little linen stays and held out her arms to Mme Jules, who 
drew the short-sleeved tunic over them.

"Make haste; they're growing angry!" she muttered.

The prince with half-closed eyes marked the swelling lines of her 
bosom with an air of connoisseurship, while the Marquis de Chouard 
wagged his head involuntarily.  Muffat gazed at the carpet in order 
not to see any more.  At length Venus, with only her gauze veil over 
her shoulders, was ready to go on the stage.  Mme Jules, with 
vacant, unconcerned eyes and an expression suggestive of a little 
elderly wooden doll, still kept circling round her.  With brisk 
movements she took pins out of the inexhaustible pincushion over her 
heart and pinned up Venus' tunic, but as she ran over all those 
plump nude charms with her shriveled hands, nothing was suggested to 
her.  She was as one whom her sex does not concern.

"There!" said the young woman, taking a final look at herself in the 
mirror.

Bordenave was back again.  He was anxious and said the third act had 
begun.

"Very well!  I'm coming," replied Nana.  "Here's a pretty fuss!  
Why, it's usually I that waits for the others."

The gentlemen left the dressing room, but they did not say good-by, 
for the prince had expressed a desire to assist behind the scenes at 
the performance of the third act.  Left alone, Nana seemed greatly 
surprised and looked round her in all directions.

"Where can she be?" she queried.

She was searching for Satin.  When she had found her again, waiting 
on her trunk behind the curtain, Satin quietly replied:

"Certainly I didn't want to be in your way with all those men 
there!"

And she added further that she was going now.  But Nana held her 
back.  What a silly girl she was!  Now that Bordenave had agreed to 
take her on!  Why, the bargain was to be struck after the play was 
over!  Satin hesitated.  There were too many bothers; she was out of 
her element!  Nevertheless, she stayed.

As the prince was coming down the little wooden staircase a strange 
sound of smothered oaths and stamping, scuffling feet became audible 
on the other side of the theater.  The actors waiting for their cues 
were being scared by quite a serious episode.  For some seconds past 
Mignon had been renewing his jokes and smothering Fauchery with 
caresses.  He had at last invented a little game of a novel kind and 
had begun flicking the other's nose in order, as he phrased it, to 
keep the flies off him.  This kind of game naturally diverted the 
actors to any extent.

But success had suddenly thrown Mignon off his balance.  He had 
launched forth into extravagant courses and had given the journalist 
a box on the ear, an actual, a vigorous, box on the ear.  This time 
he had gone too far: in the presence of so many spectators it was 
impossible for Fauchery to pocket such a blow with laughing 
equanimity.  Whereupon the two men had desisted from their farce, 
had sprung at one another's throats, their faces livid with hate, 
and were now rolling over and over behind a set of side lights, 
pounding away at each other as though they weren't breakable.

"Monsieur Bordenave, Monsieur Bordenave!" said the stage manager, 
coming up in a terrible flutter.

Bordenave made his excuses to the prince and followed him.  When he 
recognized Fauchery and Mignon in the men on the floor he gave vent 
to an expression of annoyance.  They had chosen a nice time, 
certainly, with His Highness on the other side of the scenery and 
all that houseful of people who might have overheard the row!  To 
make matters worse, Rose Mignon arrived out of breath at the very 
moment she was due on the stage.  Vulcan, indeed, was giving her the 
cue, but Rose stood rooted to the ground, marveling at sight of her 
husband and her lover as they lay wallowing at her feet, strangling 
one another, kicking, tearing their hair out and whitening their 
coats with dust.  They barred the way.  A sceneshifter had even 
stopped Fauchery's hat just when the devilish thing was going to 
bound onto the stage in the middle of the struggle.  Meanwhile 
Vulcan, who had been gagging away to amuse the audience, gave Rose 
her cue a second time.  But she stood motionless, still gazing at 
the two men.

"Oh, don't look at THEM!" Bordenave furiously whispered to her.  "Go 
on the stage; go on, do!  It's no business of yours!  Why, you're 
missing your cue!"

And with a push from the manager, Rose stepped over the prostrate 
bodies and found herself in the flare of the footlights and in the 
presence of the audience.  She had quite failed to understand why 
they were fighting on the floor behind her.  Trembling from head to 
foot and with a humming in her ears, she came down to the 
footlights, Diana's sweet, amorous smile on her lips, and attacked 
the opening lines of her duet with so feeling a voice that the 
public gave her a veritable ovation.

Behind the scenery she could hear the dull thuds caused by the two 
men.  They had rolled down to the wings, but fortunately the music 
covered the noise made by their feet as they kicked against them.

"By God!" yelled Bordenave in exasperation when at last he had 
succeeded in separating them.  "Why couldn't you fight at home?  You 
know as well as I do that I don't like this sort of thing.  You, 
Mignon, you'll do me the pleasure of staying over here on the prompt 
side, and you, Fauchery, if you leave the O.P. side I'll chuck you 
out of the theater.  You understand, eh?  Prompt side and O.P. side 
or I forbid Rose to bring you here at all."

When he returned to the prince's presence the latter asked what was 
the matter.

"Oh, nothing at all," he murmured quietly.

Nana was standing wrapped in furs, talking to these gentlemen while 
awaiting her cue.  As Count Muffat was coming up in order to peep 
between two of the wings at the stage, he understood from a sign 
made him by the stage manager that he was to step softly.  Drowsy 
warmth was streaming down from the flies, and in the wings, which 
were lit by vivid patches of light, only a few people remained, 
talking in low voices or making off on tiptoe.  The gasman was at 
his post amid an intricate arrangement of cocks; a fireman, leaning 
against the side lights, was craning forward, trying to catch a 
glimpse of things, while on his seat, high up, the curtain man was 
watching with resigned expression, careless of the play, constantly 
on the alert for the bell to ring him to his duty among the ropes.  
And amid the close air and the shuffling of feet and the sound of 
whispering, the voices of the actors on the stage sounded strange, 
deadened, surprisingly discordant.  Farther off again, above the 
confused noises of the band, a vast breathing sound was audible.  It 
was the breath of the house, which sometimes swelled up till it 
burst in vague rumors, in laughter, in applause.  Though invisible, 
the presence of the public could be felt, even in the silences.

"There's something open," said Nana sharply, and with that she 
tightened the folds of her fur cloak.  "Do look, Barillot.  I bet 
they've just opened a window.  Why, one might catch one's death of 
cold here!"

Barillot swore that he had closed every window himself but suggested 
that possibly there were broken panes about.  The actors were always 
complaining of drafts.  Through the heavy warmth of that gaslit 
region blasts of cold air were constantly passing--it was a regular 
influenza trap, as Fontan phrased it.

"I should like to see YOU in a low-cut dress," continued Nana, 
growing annoyed.

"Hush!" murmured Bordenave.

On the stage Rose rendered a phrase in her duet so cleverly that the 
stalls burst into universal applause.  Nana was silent at this, and 
her face grew grave.  Meanwhile the count was venturing down a 
passage when Barillot stopped him and said he would make a discovery 
there.  Indeed, he obtained an oblique back view of the scenery and 
of the wings which had been strengthened, as it were, by a thick 
layer of old posters.  Then he caught sight of a corner of the 
stage, of the Etna cave hollowed out in a silver mine and of 
Vulcan's forge in the background.  Battens, lowered from above, lit 
up a sparkling substance which had been laid on with large dabs of 
the brush.  Side lights with red glasses and blue were so placed as 
to produce the appearance of a fiery brazier, while on the floor of 
the stage, in the far background, long lines of gaslight had been 
laid down in order to throw a wall of dark rocks into sharp relief.  
Hard by on a gentle, "practicable" incline, amid little points of 
light resembling the illumination lamps scattered about in the grass 
on the night of a public holiday, old Mme Drouard, who played Juno, 
was sitting dazed and sleepy, waiting for her cue.

Presently there was a commotion, for Simonne, while listening to a 
story Clarisse was telling her, cried out:

"My!  It's the Tricon!"

It was indeed the Tricon, wearing the same old curls and looking as 
like a litigious great lady as ever.

When she saw Nana she went straight up to her.

"No," said the latter after some rapid phrases had been exchanged, 
"not now."  The old lady looked grave.  Just then Prulliere passed 
by and shook hands with her, while two little chorus girls stood 
gazing at her with looks of deep emotion.  For a moment she seemed 
to hesitate.  Then she beckoned to Simonne, and the rapid exchange 
of sentences began again.

"Yes," said Simonne at last.  "In half an hour."

But as she was going upstairs again to her dressing room, Mme Bron, 
who was once more going the rounds with letters, presented one to 
her.  Bordenave lowered his voice and furiously reproached the 
portress for having allowed the Tricon to come in.  That woman!  And 
on such an evening of all others!  It made him so angry because His 
Highness was there!  Mme Bron, who had been thirty years in the 
theater, replied quite sourly.  How was she to know? she asked.  The 
Tricon did business with all the ladies--M. le Directeur had met her 
a score of times without making remarks.  And while Bordenave was 
muttering oaths the Tricon stood quietly by, scrutinizing the prince 
as became a woman who weighs a man at a glance.  A smile lit up her 
yellow face.  Presently she paced slowly off through the crowd of 
deeply deferential little women.

"Immediately, eh?" she queried, turning round again to Simonne.

Simonne seemed much worried.  The letter was from a young man to 
whom she had engaged herself for that evening.  She gave Mme Bron a 
scribbled note in which were the words, "Impossible tonight, 
darling--I'm booked."  But she was still apprehensive; the young man 
might possibly wait for her in spite of everything.  As she was not 
playing in the third act, she had a mind to be off at once and 
accordingly begged Clarisse to go and see if the man were there.  
Clarisse was only due on the stage toward the end of the act, and so 
she went downstairs while Simonne ran up for a minute to their 
common dressing room.

In Mme Bron's drinking bar downstairs a super, who was charged with 
the part of Pluto, was drinking in solitude amid the folds of a 
great red robe diapered with golden flames.  The little business 
plied by the good portress must have been progressing finely, for 
the cellarlike hole under the stairs was wet with emptied heeltaps 
and water.  Clarisse picked up the tunic of Iris, which was dragging 
over the greasy steps behind her, but she halted prudently at the 
turn in the stairs and was content simply to crane forward and peer 
into the lodge.  She certainly had been quick to scent things out!  
Just fancy!  That idiot La Faloise was still there, sitting on the 
same old chair between the table and the stove!  He had made 
pretense of sneaking off in front of Simonne and had returned after 
her departure.  For the matter of that, the lodge was still full of 
gentlemen who sat there gloved, elegant, submissive and patient as 
ever.  They were all waiting and viewing each other gravely as they 
waited.  On the table there were now only some dirty plates, Mme 
Bron having recently distributed the last of the bouquets.  A single 
fallen rose was withering on the floor in the neighborhood of the 
black cat, who had lain down and curled herself up while the kittens 
ran wild races and danced fierce gallops among the gentlemen's legs.  
Clarisse was momentarily inclined to turn La Faloise out.  The idiot 
wasn't fond of animals, and that put the finishing touch to him!  He 
was busy drawing in his legs because the cat was there, and he 
didn't want to touch her.

"He'll nip you; take care!" said Pluto, who was a joker, as he went 
upstairs, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

After that Clarisse gave up the idea of hauling La Faloise over the 
coals.  She had seen Mme Bron giving the letter to Simonne's young 
man, and he had gone out to read it under the gas light in the 
lobby.  "Impossible tonight, darling--I'm booked."  And with that he 
had peaceably departed, as one who was doubtless used to the 
formula.  He, at any rate, knew how to conduct himself!  Not so the 
others, the fellows who sat there doggedly on Mme Bron's battered 
straw-bottomed chairs under the great glazed lantern, where the heat 
was enough to roast you and there was an unpleasant odor.  What a 
lot of men it must have held!  Clarisse went upstairs again in 
disgust, crossed over behind scenes and nimbly mounted three flights 
of steps which led to the dressing rooms, in order to bring Simonne 
her reply.

Downstairs the prince had withdrawn from the rest and stood talking 
to Nana.  He never left her; he stood brooding over her through 
half-shut eyelids.  Nana did not look at him but, smiling, nodded 
yes.  Suddenly, however, Count Muffat obeyed an overmastering 
impulse, and leaving Bordenave, who was explaining to him the 
working of the rollers and windlasses, he came up in order to 
interrupt their confabulations.  Nana lifted her eyes and smiled at 
him as she smiled at His Highness.  But she kept her ears open 
notwithstanding, for she was waiting for her cue.

"The third act is the shortest, I believe," the prince began saying, 
for the count's presence embarrassed him.

She did not answer; her whole expression altered; she was suddenly 
intent on her business.  With a rapid movement of the shoulders she 
had let her furs slip from her, and Mme Jules, standing behind, had 
caught them in her arms.  And then after passing her two hands to 
her hair as though to make it fast, she went on the stage in all her 
nudity.

"Hush, hush!" whispered Bordenave.

The count and the prince had been taken by surprise.  There was 
profound silence, and then a deep sigh and the far-off murmur of a 
multitude became audible.  Every evening when Venus entered in her 
godlike nakedness the same effect was produced.  Then Muffat was 
seized with a desire to see; he put his eye to the peephole.  Above 
and beyond the glowing arc formed by the footlights the dark body of 
the house seemed full of ruddy vapor, and against this neutral-
tinted background, where row upon row of faces struck a pale, 
uncertain note, Nana stood forth white and vast, so that the boxes 
from the balcony to the flies were blotted from view.  He saw her 
from behind, noted her swelling hips, her outstretched arms, while 
down on the floor, on the same level as her feet, the prompter's 
head--an old man's head with a humble, honest face--stood on the 
edge of the stage, looking as though it had been severed from the 
body.  At certain points in her opening number an undulating 
movement seemed to run from her neck to her waist and to die out in 
the trailing border of her tunic.  When amid a tempest of applause 
she had sung her last note she bowed, and the gauze floated forth 
round about her limbs, and her hair swept over her waist as she bent 
sharply backward.  And seeing her thus, as with bending form and 
with exaggerated hips she came backing toward the count's peephole, 
he stood upright again, and his face was very white.  The stage had 
disappeared, and he now saw only the reverse side of the scenery 
with its display of old posters pasted up in every direction.  On 
the practicable slope, among the lines of gas jets, the whole of 
Olympus had rejoined the dozing Mme Drouard.  They were waiting for 
the close of the act.  Bosc and Fontan sat on the floor with their 
knees drawn up to their chins, and Prulliere stretched himself and 
yawned before going on.  Everybody was worn out; their eyes were 
red, and they were longing to go home to sleep.

Just then Fauchery, who had been prowling about on the O.P. side 
ever since Bordenave had forbidden him the other, came and 
buttonholed the count in order to keep himself in countenance and 
offered at the same time to show him the dressing rooms.  An 
increasing sense of languor had left Muffat without any power of 
resistance, and after looking round for the Marquis de Chouard, who 
had disappeared, he ended by following the journalist.  He 
experienced a mingled feeling of relief and anxiety as he left the 
wings whence he had been listening to Nana's songs.

Fauchery had already preceded him up the staircase, which was closed 
on the first and second floors by low-paneled doors.  It was one of 
those stairways which you find in miserable tenements.  Count Muffat 
had seen many such during his rounds as member of the Benevolent 
Organization.  It was bare and dilapidated: there was a wash of 
yellow paint on its walls; its steps had been worn by the incessant 
passage of feet, and its iron balustrade had grown smooth under the 
friction of many hands.  On a level with the floor on every 
stairhead there was a low window which resembled a deep, square 
venthole, while in lanterns fastened to the walls flaring gas jets 
crudely illuminatcd the surrounding squalor and gave out a glowing 
heat which, as it mounted up the narrow stairwell, grew ever more 
intense.

When he reached the foot of the stairs the count once more felt the 
hot breath upon his neck and shoulders.  As of old it was laden with 
the odor of women, wafted amid floods of light and sound from the 
dressing rooms above, and now with every upward step he took the 
musky scent of powders and the tart perfume of toilet vinegars 
heated and bewildered him more and more.  On the first floor two 
corridors ran backward, branching sharply off and presenting a set 
of doors to view which were painted yellow and numbered with great 
white numerals in such a way as to suggest a hotel with a bad 
reputation.  The tiles on the floor had been many of them unbedded, 
and the old house being in a state of subsidence, they stuck up like 
hummocks.  The count dashed recklessly forward, glanced through a 
half-open door and saw a very dirty room which resembled a barber's 
shop in a poor part of the town.  In was furnished with two chairs, 
a mirror and a small table containing a drawer which had been 
blackened by the grease from brushes and combs.  A great perspiring 
fellow with smoking shoulders was changing his linen there, while in 
a similar room next door a woman was drawing on her gloves 
preparatory to departure.  Her hair was damp and out of curl, as 
though she had just had a bath.  But Fauchery began calling the 
count, and the latter was rushing up without delay when a furious 
"damn!" burst from the corridor on the right.  Mathilde, a little 
drab of a miss, had just broken her washhand basin, the soapy water 
from which was flowing out to the stairhead.  A dressing room door 
banged noisily.  Two women in their stays skipped across the 
passage, and another, with the hem of her shift in her mouth, 
appeared and immediately vanished from view.  Then followed a sound 
of laughter, a dispute, the snatch of a song which was suddenly 
broken off short.  All along the passage naked gleams, sudden 
visions of white skin and wan underlinen were observable through 
chinks in doorways.  Two girls were making very merry, showing each 
other their birthmarks.  One of them, a very young girl, almost a 
child, had drawn her skirts up over her knees in order to sew up a 
rent in her drawers, and the dressers, catching sight of the two 
men, drew some curtains half to for decency's sake.  The wild 
stampede which follows the end of a play had already begun, the 
grand removal of white paint and rouge, the reassumption amid clouds 
of rice powder of ordinary attire.  The strange animal scent came in 
whiffs of redoubled intensity through the lines of banging doors.  
On the third story Muffat abandoned himself to the feeling of 
intoxication which was overpowering him.  For the chorus girls' 
dressing room was there, and you saw a crowd of twenty women and a 
wild display of soaps and flasks of lavender water.  The place 
resembled the common room in a slum lodging house.  As he passed by 
he heard fierce sounds of washing behind a closed door and a perfect 
storm raging in a washhand basin.  And as he was mounting up to the 
topmost story of all, curiosity led him to risk one more little peep 
through an open loophole.  The room was empty, and under the flare 
of the gas a solitary chamber pot stood forgotten among a heap of 
petticoats trailing on the floor.  This room afforded him his 
ultimate impression.  Upstairs on the fourth floor he was well-nigh 
suffocated.  All the scents, all the blasts of heat, had found their 
goal there.  The yellow ceiling looked as if it had been baked, and 
a lamp burned amid fumes of russet-colored fog.  For some seconds he 
leaned upon the iron balustrade which felt warm and damp and well-
nigh human to the touch.  And he shut his eyes and drew a long 
breath and drank in the sexual atmosphere of the place.  Hitherto he 
had been utterly ignorant of it, but now it beat full in his face.

"Do come here," shouted Fauchery, who had vanished some moments ago.  
"You're being asked for."

At the end of the corridor was the dressing room belonging to 
Clarisse and Simonne.  It was a long, ill-built room under the roof 
with a garret ceiling and sloping walls.  The light penetrated to it 
from two deep-set openings high up in the wall, but at that hour of 
the night the dressing room was lit by flaring gas.  It was papered 
with a paper at seven sous a roll with a pattern of roses twining 
over green trelliswork.  Two boards, placed near one another and 
covered with oilcloth, did duty for dressing tables.  They were 
black with spilled water, and underneath them was a fine medley of 
dinted zinc jugs, slop pails and coarse yellow earthenware crocks.  
There was an array of fancy articles in the room--a battered, soiled 
and well-worn array of chipped basins, of toothless combs, of all 
those manifold untidy trifles which, in their hurry and 
carelessness, two women will leave scattered about when they undress 
and wash together amid purely temporary surroundings, the dirty 
aspect of which has ceased to concern them.

"Do come here," Fauchery repeated with the good-humored familiarity 
which men adopt among their fallen sisters.  "Clarisse is wanting to 
kiss you."

Muffat entered the room at last.  But what was his surprise when he 
found the Marquis de Chouard snugly enscounced on a chair between 
the two dressing tables!  The marquis had withdrawn thither some 
time ago.  He was spreading his feet apart because a pail was 
leaking and letting a whitish flood spread over the floor.  He was 
visibly much at his ease, as became a man who knew all the snug 
corners, and had grown quite merry in the close dressing room, where 
people might have been bathing, and amid those quietly immodest 
feminine surroundings which the uncleanness of the little place 
rendered at once natural and poignant.

"D'you go with the old boy?" Simonne asked Clarisse in a whisper.

"Rather!" replied the latter aloud.

The dresser, a very ugly and extremely familiar young girl, who was 
helping Simonne into her coat, positively writhed with laughter.  
The three pushed each other and babbled little phrases which 
redoubled their merriment.

"Come, Clarisse, kiss the gentleman," said Fauchery.  "You know, 
he's got the rhino."

And turning to the count:

"You'll see, she's very nice!  She's going to kiss you!"

But Clarisse was disgusted by the men.  She spoke in violent terms 
of the dirty lot waiting at the porter's lodge down below.  Besides, 
she was in a hurry to go downstairs again; they were making her miss 
her last scene.  Then as Fauchery blocked up the doorway, she gave 
Muffat a couple of kisses on the whiskers, remarking as she did so:

"It's not for you, at any rate!  It's for that nuisance Fauchery!"

And with that she darted off, and the count remained much 
embarrassed in his father-in-law's presence.  The blood had rushed 
to his face.  In Nana's dressing room, amid all the luxury of 
hangings and mirrors, he had not experienced the sharp physical 
sensation which the shameful wretchedness of that sorry garret 
excited within him, redolent as it was of these two girls' self-
abandonment.  Meanwhile the marquis had hurried in the rear of 
Simonne, who was making off at the top of her pace, and he kept 
whispering in her ear while she shook her head in token of refusal.  
Fauchery followed them, laughing.  And with that the count found 
himself alone with the dresser, who was washing out the basins.  
Accordingly he took his departure, too, his legs almost failing 
under him.  Once more he put up flights of half-dressed women and 
caused doors to bang as he advanced.  But amid the disorderly, 
disbanded troops of girls to be found on each of the four stories, 
he was only distinctly aware of a cat, a great tortoise-shell cat, 
which went gliding upstairs through the ovenlike place where the air 
was poisoned with musk, rubbing its back against the banisters and 
keeping its tail exceedingly erect.

"Yes, to be sure!" said a woman hoarsely.  "I thought they'd keep us 
back tonight!  What a nuisance they are with their calls!"

The end had come; the curtain had just fallen.  There was a 
veritable stampede on the staircase--its walls rang with 
exclamations, and everyone was in a savage hurry to dress and be 
off.  As Count Muffat came down the last step or two he saw Nana and 
the prince passing slowly along the passage.  The young woman halted 
and lowered her voice as she said with a smile:

"All right then--by and by!"

The prince returned to the stage, where Bordenave was awaiting him.  
And left alone with Nana, Muffat gave way to an impulse of anger and 
desire.  He ran up behind her and, as she was on the point of 
entering her dressing room, imprinted a rough kiss on her neck among 
little golden hairs curling low down between her shoulders.  It was 
as though he had returned the kiss that had been given him upstairs.  
Nana was in a fury; she lifted her hand, but when she recognized the 
count she smiled.

"Oh, you frightened me," she said simply.

And her smile was adorable in its embarrassment and submissiveness, 
as though she had despaired of this kiss and were happy to have 
received it.  But she could do nothing for him either that evening 
or the day after.  It was a case of waiting.  Nay, even if it had 
been in her power she would still have let herself be desired.  Her 
glance said as much.  At length she continued:

"I'm a landowner, you know.  Yes, I'm buying a country house near 
Orleans, in a part of the world to which you sometimes betake 
yourself.  Baby told me you did--little Georges Hugon, I mean.  You 
know him?  So come and see me down there."

The count was a shy man, and the thought of his roughness had 
frightened him; he was ashamed of what he had done and he bowed 
ceremoniously, promising at the same time to take advantage of her 
invitation.  Then he walked off as one who dreams.

He was rejoining the prince when, passing in front of the foyer, he 
heard Satin screaming out:

"Oh, the dirty old thing!  Just you bloody well leave me alone!"

It was the Marquis de Chouard who was tumbling down over Satin.  The 
girl had decidedly had enough of the fashionable world!  Nana had 
certainly introduced her to Bordenave, but the necessity of standing 
with sealed lips for fear of allowing some awkward phrase to escape 
her had been too much for her feelings, and now she was anxious to 
regain her freedom, the more so as she had run against an old flame 
of hers in the wings.  This was the super, to whom the task of 
impersonating Pluto had been entrusted, a pastry cook, who had 
already treated her to a whole week of love and flagellation.  She 
was waiting for him, much irritated at the things the marquis was 
saying to her, as though she were one of those theatrical ladies!  
And so at last she assumed a highly respectable expression and 
jerked out this phrase:

"My husband's coming!  You'll see."

Meanwhile the worn-looking artistes were dropping off one after the 
other in their outdoor coats.  Groups of men and women were coming 
down the little winding staircase, and the outlines of battered hats 
and worn-out shawls were visible in the shadows.  They looked 
colorless and unlovely, as became poor play actors who have got rid 
of their paint.  On the stage, where the side lights and battens 
were being extinguished, the prince was listening to an anecdote 
Bordenave was telling him.  He was waiting for Nana, and when at 
length she made her appearance the stage was dark, and the fireman 
on duty was finishing his round, lantern in hand.  Bordenave, in 
order to save His Highness going about by the Passage des Panoramas, 
had made them open the corridor which led from the porter's lodge to 
the entrance hall of the theater.  Along this narrow alley little 
women were racing pell-mell, for they were delighted to escape from 
the men who were waiting for them in the other passage.  They went 
jostling and elbowing along, casting apprehensive glances behind 
them and only breathing freely when they got outside.  Fontan, Bosc 
and Prulliere, on the other hand, retired at a leisurely pace, 
joking at the figure cut by the serious, paying admirers who were 
striding up and down the Galerie des Varietes at a time when the 
little dears were escaping along the boulevard with the men of their 
hearts.  But Clarisse was especially sly.  She had her suspicions 
about La Faloise, and, as a matter of fact, he was still in his 
place in the lodge among the gentlemen obstinately waiting on Mme 
Bron's chairs.  They all stretched forward, and with that she passed 
brazenly by in the wake of a friend.  The gentlemen were blinking in 
bewilderment over the wild whirl of petticoats eddying at the foot 
of the narrow stairs.  It made them desperate to think they had 
waited so long, only to see them all flying away like this without 
being able to recognize a single one.  The litter of little black 
cats were sleeping on the oilcloth, nestled against their mother's 
belly, and the latter was stretching her paws out in a state of 
beatitude while the big tortoise-shell cat sat at the other end of 
the table, her tail stretched out behind her and her yellow eyes 
solemnly following the flight of the women.

"If His Highness will be good enough to come this way," said 
Bordenave at the bottom of the stairs, and he pointed to the 
passage.

Some chorus girls were still crowding along it.  The prince began 
following Nana while Muffat and the marquis walked behind.

It was a long, narrow passage lying between the theater and the 
house next door, a kind of contracted by-lane which had been covered 
with a sloping glass roof.  Damp oozed from the walls, and the 
footfall sounded as hollow on the tiled floor as in an underground 
vault.  It was crowded with the kind of rubbish usually found in a 
garret.  There was a workbench on which the porter was wont to plane 
such parts of the scenery as required it, besides a pile of wooden 
barriers which at night were placed at the doors of the theater for 
the purpose of regulating the incoming stream of people.  Nana had 
to pick up her dress as she passed a hydrant which, through having 
been carelessly turned off, was flooding the tiles underfoot.  In 
the entrance hall the company bowed and said good-by.  And when 
Bordenave was alone he summed up his opinion of the prince in a 
shrug of eminently philosophic disdain.

"He's a bit of a duffer all the same," he said to Fauchery without 
entering on further explanations, and with that Rose Mignon carried 
the journalist off with her husband in order to effect a 
reconciliation between them at home.

Muffat was left alone on the sidewalk.  His Highness had handed Nana 
quietly into his carriage, and the marquis had slipped off after 
Satin and her super.  In his excitement he was content to follow 
this vicious pair in vague hopes of some stray favor being granted 
him.  Then with brain on fire Muffat decided to walk home.  The 
struggle within him had wholly ceased.  The ideas and beliefs of the 
last forty years were being drowned in a flood of new life.  While 
he was passing along the boulevards the roll of the last carriages 
deafened him with the name of Nana; the gaslights set nude limbs 
dancing before his eyes--the nude limbs, the lithe arms, the white 
shoulders, of Nana.  And he felt that he was hers utterly: he would 
have abjured everything, sold everything, to possess her for a 
single hour that very night.  Youth, a lustful puberty of early 
manhood, was stirring within him at last, flaming up suddenly in the 
chaste heart of the Catholic and amid the dignified traditions of 
middle age.



CHAPTER VI


Count Muffat, accompanied by his wife and daughter, had arrived 
overnight at Les Fondettes, where Mme Hugon, who was staying there 
with only her son Georges, had invited them to come and spend a 
week.  The house, which had been built at the end of the eighteenth 
century, stood in the middle of a huge square enclosure.  It was 
perfectly unadorned, but the garden possessed magnificent shady 
trees and a chain of tanks fed by running spring water.  It stood at 
the side of the road which leads from Orleans to Paris and with its 
rich verdure and high-embowered trees broke the monotony of that 
flat countryside, where fields stretched to the horizon's verge.

At eleven o'clock, when the second lunch bell had called the whole 
household together, Mme Hugon, smiling in her kindly maternal way, 
gave Sabine two great kisses, one on each cheek, and said as she did 
so:

"You know it's my custom in the country.  Oh, seeing you here makes 
me feel twenty years younger.  Did you sleep well in your old room?"

Then without waiting for her reply she turned to Estelle:

"And this little one, has she had a nap too?  Give me a kiss, my 
child."

They had taken their seats in the vast dining room, the windows of 
which looked out on the park.  But they only occupied one end of the 
long table, where they sat somewhat crowded together for company's 
sake.  Sabine, in high good spirits, dwelt on various childish 
memories which had been stirred up within her--memories of months 
passed at Les Fondettes, of long walks, of a tumble into one of the 
tanks on a summer evening, of an old romance of chivalry discovered 
by her on the top of a cupboard and read during the winter before 
fires made of vine branches.  And Georges, who had not seen the 
countess for some months, thought there was something curious about 
her.  Her face seemed changed, somehow, while, on the other hand, 
that stick of an Estelle seemed more insignificant and dumb and 
awkward than ever.

While such simple fare as cutlets and boiled eggs was being 
discussed by the company, Mme Hugon, as became a good housekeeper, 
launched out into complaints.  The butchers, she said, were becoming 
impossible.  She bought everything at Orleans, and yet they never 
brought her the pieces she asked for.  Yet, alas, if her guests had 
nothing worth eating it was their own fault: they had come too late 
in the season.

"There's no sense in it," she said.  "I've been expecting you since 
June, and now we're half through September.  You see, it doesn't 
look pretty."

And with a movement she pointed to the trees on the grass outside, 
the leaves of which were beginning to turn yellow.  The day was 
covered, and the distance was hidden by a bluish haze which was 
fraught with a sweet and melancholy peacefulness.

"Oh, I'm expecting company," she continued.  "We shall be gayer 
then!  The first to come will be two gentlemen whom Georges has 
invited--Monsieur Fauchery and Monsieur Daguenet; you know them, do 
you not?  Then we shall have Monsieur de Vandeuvres, who has 
promised me a visit these five years past.  This time, perhaps, 
he'll make up his mind!"

"Oh, well and good!" said the countess, laughing.  "If we only can 
get Monsieur de Vandeuvres!  But he's too much engaged."

"And Philippe?" queried Muffat.

"Philippe has asked for a furlough," replied the old lady, "but 
without doubt you won't be at Les Fondettes any longer when he 
arrives."

The coffee was served.  Paris was now the subject of conversation, 
and Steiner's name was mentioned, at which Mme Hugon gave a little 
cry.

"Let me see," she said; "Monsieur Steiner is that stout man I met at 
your house one evening.  He's a banker, is he not?  Now there's a 
detestable man for you!  Why, he's gone and bought an actress an 
estate about a league from here, over Gumieres way, beyond the 
Choue.  The whole countryside's scandalized.  Did you know about 
that, my friend?"

"I knew nothing about it," replied Muffat.  "Ah, then, Steiner's 
bought a country place in the neighborhood!"

Hearing his mother broach the subject, Georges looked into his 
coffee cup, but in his astonishment at the count's answer he glanced 
up at him and stared.  Why was he lying so glibly?  The count, on 
his side, noticed the young fellow's movement and gave him a 
suspicious glance.  Mme Hugon continued to go into details: the 
country place was called La Mignotte.  In order to get there one had 
to go up the bank of the Choue as far as Gumieres in order to cross 
the bridge; otherwise one got one's feet wet and ran the risk of a 
ducking.

"And what is the actress's name?" asked the countess.

"Oh, I wasn't told," murmured the old lady.  "Georges, you were 
there the morning the gardener spoke to us about it."

Georges appeared to rack his brains.  Muffat waited, twirling a 
teaspoon between his fingers.  Then the countess addressed her 
husband:

"Isn't Monsieur Steiner with that singer at the Varietes, that 
Nana?"

"Nana, that's the name!  A horrible woman!" cried Mme Hugon with 
growing annoyance.  "And they are expecting her at La Mignotte.  
I've heard all about it from the gardener.  Didn't the gardener say 
they were expecting her this evening, Georges?"

The count gave a little start of astonishment, but Georges replied 
with much vivacity:

"Oh, Mother, the gardener spoke without knowing anything about it.  
Directly afterward the coachman said just the opposite.  Nobody's 
expected at La Mignotte before the day after tomorrow."

He tried hard to assume a natural expression while he slyly watched 
the effect of his remarks on the count.  The latter was twirling his 
spoon again as though reassured.  The countess, her eyes fixed 
dreamily on the blue distances of the park, seemed to have lost all 
interest in the conversation.  The shadow of a smile on her lips, 
she seemed to be following up a secret thought which had been 
suddenly awakened within her.  Estelle, on the other hand, sitting 
stiffly on her chair, had heard all that had been said about Nana, 
but her white, virginal face had not betrayed a trace of emotion.

"Dear me, dear me!  I've got no right to grow angry," murmured Mme 
Hugon after a pause, and with a return to her old good humor she 
added:

"Everybody's got a right to live.  If we meet this said lady on the 
road we shall not bow to her--that's all!"

And as they got up from table she once more gently upbraided the 
Countess Sabine for having been so long in coming to her that year.  
But the countess defended herself and threw the blame of the delays 
upon her husband's shoulders.  Twice on the eve of departure, when 
all the trunks were locked, he counterordered their journey on the 
plea of urgent business.  Then he had suddenly decided to start just 
when the trip seemed shelved.  Thereupon the old lady told them how 
Georges in the same way had twice announced his arrival without 
arriving and had finally cropped up at Les Fondettes the day before 
yesterday, when she was no longer expecting him.  They had come down 
into the garden, and the two men, walking beside the ladies, were 
listening to them in consequential silence.

"Never mind," said Mme Hugon, kissing her son's sunny locks, "Zizi 
is a very good boy to come and bury himself in the country with his 
mother.  He's a dear Zizi not to forget me!"

In the afternoon she expressed some anxiety, for Georges, directly 
after leaving the table, had complained of a heavy feeling in his 
head and now seemed in for an atrocious sick headache.  Toward four 
o'clock he said he would go upstairs to bed: it was the only remedy.  
After sleeping till tomorrow morning he would be perfectly himself 
again.  His mother was bent on putting him to bed herself, but as 
she left the room he ran and locked the door, explaining that he was 
shutting himself in so that no one should come and disturb him.  
Then caressingly he shouted, "Good night till tomorrow, little 
Mother!" and promised to take a nap.  But he did not go to bed again 
and with flushed cheeks and bright eyes noiselessly put on his 
clothes.  Then he sat on a chair and waited.  When the dinner bell 
rang he listened for Count Muffat, who was on his way to the dining 
room, and ten minutes later, when he was certain that no one would 
see him, he slipped from the window to the ground with the 
assistance of a rain pipe.  His bedroom was situated on the first 
floor and looked out upon the rear of the house.  He threw himself 
among some bushes and got out of the park and then galloped across 
the fields with empty stomach and heart beating with excitement.  
Night was closing in, and a small fine rain was beginning to fall.

It was the very evening that Nana was due at La Mignotte.  Ever 
since in the preceding May Steiner had bought her this country place 
she had from time to time been so filled with the desire of taking 
possession that she had wept hot tears about, but on each of these 
occasions Bordenave had refused to give her even the shortest leave 
and had deferred her holiday till September on the plea that he did 
not intend putting an understudy in her place, even for one evening, 
now that the exhibition was on.  Toward the close of August he spoke 
of October.  Nana was furious and declared that she would be at La 
Mignotte in the middle of September.  Nay, in order to dare 
Bordenave, she even invited a crowd of guests in his very presence.  
One afternoon in her rooms, as Muffat, whose advances she still 
adroitly resisted, was beseeching her with tremulous emotion to 
yield to his entreaties, she at length promised to be kind, but not 
in Paris, and to him, too, she named the middle of September.  Then 
on the twelfth she was seized by a desire to be off forthwith with 
Zoe as her sole companion.  It might be that Bordenave had got wind 
of her intentions and was about to discover some means of detaining 
her.  She was delighted at the notion of putting him in a fix, and 
she sent him a doctor's certificate.  When once the idea had entered 
her head of being the first to get to La Mignotte and of living 
there two days without anybody knowing anything about it, she rushed 
Zoe through the operation of packing and finally pushed her into a 
cab, where in a sudden burst of extreme contrition she kissed her 
and begged her pardon.  It was only when they got to the station 
refreshment room that she thought of writing Steiner of her 
movements.  She begged him to wait till the day after tomorrow 
before rejoining her if he wanted to find her quite bright and 
fresh.  And then, suddenly conceiving another project, she wrote a 
second letter, in which she besought her aunt to bring little Louis 
to her at once.  It would do Baby so much good!  And how happy they 
would be together in the shade of the trees!  In the railway 
carriage between Paris and Orleans she spoke of nothing else; her 
eyes were full of tears; she had an unexpected attack of maternal 
tenderness and mingled together flowers, birds and child in her 
every sentence.

La Mignotte was more than three leagues away from the station, and 
Nana lost a good hour over the hire of a carriage, a huge, 
dilapidated calash, which rumbled slowly along to an accompaniment 
of rattling old iron.  She had at once taken possession of the 
coachman, a little taciturn old man whom she overwhelmed with 
questions.  Had he often passed by La Mignotte?  It was behind this 
hill then?  There ought to be lots of trees there, eh?  And the 
house could one see it at a distance?  The little old man answered 
with a succession of grunts.  Down in the calash Nana was almost 
dancing with impatience, while Zoe, in her annoyance at having left 
Paris in such a hurry, sat stiffly sulking beside her.  The horse 
suddenly stopped short, and the young woman thought they had reached 
their destination.  She put her head out of the carriage door and 
asked:

"Are we there, eh?"

By way of answer the driver whipped up his horse, which was in the 
act of painfully climbing a hill.  Nana gazed ecstatically at the 
vast plain beneath the gray sky where great clouds were banked up.

"Oh, do look, Zoe!  There's greenery!  Now, is that all wheat?  Good 
lord, how pretty it is!"

"One can quite see that Madame doesn't come from the country," was 
the servant's prim and tardy rejoinder.  "As for me, I knew the 
country only too well when I was with my dentist.  He had a house at 
Bougival.  No, it's cold, too, this evening.  It's damp in these 
parts."

They were driving under the shadow of a wood, and Nana sniffed up 
the scent of the leaves as a young dog might.  All of a sudden at a 
turn of the road she caught sight of the corner of a house among the 
trees.  Perhaps it was there!  And with that she began a 
conversation with the driver, who continued shaking his head by way 
of saying no.  Then as they drove down the other side of the hill he 
contented himself by holding out his whip and muttering, "'Tis down 
there."

She got up and stretched herself almost bodily out of the carriage 
door.

"Where is it?  Where is it?" she cried with pale cheeks, but as yet 
she saw nothing.

At last she caught sight of a bit of wall.  And then followed a 
succession of little cries and jumps, the ecstatic behavior of a 
woman overcome by a new and vivid sensation.

"I see it!  I see it, Zoe!  Look out at the other side.  Oh, there's 
a terrace with brick ornaments on the roof!  And there's a hothouse 
down there!  But the place is immense.  Oh, how happy I am!  Do 
look, Zoe!  Now, do look!"

The carriage had bthin a wall.  Then the view 
of the kitchen garden entirely engrossed her attention.  She darted 
back, jostling the lady's maid at the top of the stairs and bursting 
out:

"It's full of cabbages!  Oh, such woppers!  And lettuces and sorrel 
and onions and everything!  Come along, make haste!"

The rain was falling more heavily now, and she opened her white silk 
sunshade and ran down the garden walks. 

"Madame will catch cold," cried Zoe, who had stayed quietly behind 
under the awning over the garden door.

But Madame wanted to see things, and at each new discovery there was 
a burst of wonderment.

"Zoe, here's spinach!  Do come.  Oh, look at the artichokes!  They 
are funny.  So they grow in the ground, do they?  Now, what can that 
be?  I don't know it.  Do come, Zoe, perhaps you know."

The lady's maid never budged an inch.  Madame must really be raving 
mad.  For now the rain was coming down in torrents, and the little 
white silk sunshade was aly this time pulled up before the park gates.  A 
side door was opened, and the gardener, a tall, dry fellow, made his 
appearance, cap in hand.  Nana made an effort to regain her dignity, 
for the driver seemed now to be suppressing a laugh behind his dry, 
speechless lips.  She refrained from setting off at a run and 
listened to the gardener, who was a very talkative fellow.  He 
begged Madame to excuse the disorder in which she found everything, 
seeing that he had only received Madame's letter that very morning.  
But despite all his efforts, she flew off at a tangent and walked so 
quickly that Zoe could scarcely follow her.  At the end of the 
avenue she paused for a moment in order to take the house in at a 
glance.  It was a great pavilionlike building in the Italian manner, 
and it was flanked by a smaller construction, which a rich 
Englishman, after two years' residence in Naples, had caused to be 
erected and had forthwith become disgusted with.

"I'll take Madame over the house," said the gardener.

But she had outrun him entirely, and she shouted back that he was 
not to put himself out and that she would go over the house by 
herself.  She preferred doing that, she said.  And without removing 
her hat she dashed into the different rooms, calling to Zoe as she 
did so, shouting her impressions from one end of each corridor to 
the other and filling the empty house, which for long months had 
been uninhabited, with exclamations and bursts of laughter.  In the 
first place, there was the hall.  It was a little damp, but that 
didn't matter; one wasn't going to sleep in it.  Then came the 
drawing room, quite the thing, the drawing room, with its windows 
opening on the lawn.  Only the red upholsteries there were hideous; 
she would alter all that.  As to the dining room-well, it was a 
lovely dining room, eh?  What big blowouts you might give in Paris 
if you had a dining room as large as that!  As she was going 
upstairs to the first floor it occurred to her that she had not seen 
the kitchen, and she went down again and indulged in ecstatic 
exclamations.  Zoe ought to admire the beautiful dimensions of the 
sink and the width of the hearth, where you might have roasted a 
sheep!  When she had gone upstairs again her bedroom especially 
enchanted her.  It had been hung with delicate rose-colored Louis 
XVI cretonne by an Orleans upholsterer.  Dear me, yes!  One ought to 
sleep jolly sound in such a room as that; why, it was a real best 
bedroom!  Then came four or five guest chambers and then some 
splendid garrets, which would be extremely convenient for trunks and 
boxes.  Zoe looked very gruff and cast a frigid glance into each of 
the rooms as she lingered in Madame's wake.  She saw Nana 
disappearing up the steep garret ladder and said, "Thanks, I haven't 
the least wish to break my legs."  But the sound of a voice reached 
her from far away; indeed, it seemed to come whistling down a 
chimney.

"Zoe, Zoe, where are you?  Come up, do!  You've no idea!  It's like 
fairyland!"

Zoe went up, grumbling.  On the roof she found her mistress leaning 
against the brickwork balustrade and gazing at the valley which 
spread out into the silence.  The horizon was immeasurably wide, but 
it was now covered by masses of gray vapor, and a fierce wind was 
driving fine rain before it.  Nana had to hold her hat on with both 
hands to keep it from being blown away while her petticoats streamed 
out behind her, flapping like a flag.

"Not if I know it!" said Zoe, drawing her head in at once.  "Madame 
will be blown away.  What beastly weather!"

Madame did not hear what she said.  With her head over the 
balustrade she was gazing at the grounds beneath.  They consisted of 
seven or eight acres of land enclosed wiready dark with it.  Nor did it shelter 
Madame, whose skirts were wringing wet.  But that didn't put her out 
in the smallest degree, and in the pouring rain she visited the 
kitchen garden and the orchard, stopping in front of every fruit 
tree and bending over every bed of vegetables.  Then she ran and 
looked down the well and lifted up a frame to see what was 
underneath it and was lost in the contemplation of a huge pumpkin.  
She wanted to go along every single garden walk and to take 
immediate possession of all the things she had been wont to dream of 
in the old days, when she was a slipshod work-girl on the Paris 
pavements.  The rain redoubled, but she never heeded it and was only 
miserable at the thought that the daylight was fading.  She could 
not see clearly now and touched things with her fingers to find out 
what they were.  Suddenly in the twilight she caught sight of a bed 
of strawberries, and all that was childish in her awoke.

"Strawberries!  Strawberries!  There are some here; I can feel them.  
A plate, Zoe!  Come and pick strawberries."

And dropping her sunshade, Nana crouched down in the mire under the 
full force of the downpour.  With drenched hands she began gathering 
the fruit among the leaves.  But Zoe in the meantime brought no 
plate, and when the young woman rose to her feet again she was 
frightened.  She thought she had seen a shadow close to her.

"It's some beast!" she screamed.

But she stood rooted to the path in utter amazement.  It was a man, 
and she recognized him.

"Gracious me, it's Baby!  What ARE you doing there, baby?"

"'Gad, I've come--that's all!" replied Georges.

Her head swam.

"You knew I'd come through the gardener telling you?  Oh, that poor 
child!  Why, he's soaking!"

"Oh, I'll explain that to you!  The rain caught me on my way here, 
and then, as I didn't wish to go upstream as far as Gumieres, I 
crossed the Choue and fell into a blessed hole."

Nana forgot the strawberries forthwith.  She was trembling and full 
of pity.  That poor dear Zizi in a hole full of water!  And she drew 
him with her in the direction of the house and spoke of making up a 
roaring fire.

"You know," he murmured, stopping her among the shadows, "I was in 
hiding because I was afraid of being scolded, like in Paris, when I 
come and see you and you're not expecting me."

She made no reply but burst out laughing and gave him a kiss on the 
forehead.  Up till today she had always treated him like a naughty 
urchin, never taking his declarations seriously and amusing herself 
at his expense as though he were a little man of no consequence 
whatever.  There was much ado to install him in the house.  She 
absolutely insisted on the fire being lit in her bedroom, as being 
the most comfortable place for his reception.  Georges had not 
surprised Zoe, who was used to all kinds of encounters, but the 
gardener, who brought the wood upstairs, was greatly nonplused at 
sight of this dripping gentleman to whom he was certain he had not 
opened the front door.  He was, however, dismissed, as he was no 
longer wanted.

A lamp lit up the room, and the fire burned with a great bright 
flame.

"He'll never get dry, and he'll catch cold," said Nana, seeing 
Georges beginning to shiver.

And there  and with his 
delicate young arms showing and his bright damp hair falling almost 
to his shoulders, he looked just like a girl.

"Why, he's as slim as I am!" said Nana, putting her arm round his 
waist.  "Zoe, just come here and see how it suits him.  It's were no men's trousers in her house! 
She was on the point 
of calling the gardener back when an idea struck her.  Zoe, who was 
unpacking the trunks in the dressing room, brought her mistress a 
change of underwear, consisting of a shift and some petticoats with 
a dressing jacket.

"Oh, that's first rate!" cried the young woman.  "Zizi can put 'em 
all on.  You're not angry with me, eh?  When your clothes are dry 
you can put them on again, and then off with you, as fast as fast 
can be, so as not to have a scolding from your mamma.  Make haste!  
I'm going to change my things, too, in the dressing room."

Ten minutes afterward, when she reappeared in a tea gown, she 
clasped her hands in a perfect ecstasy.

"Oh, the darling!  How sweet he looks dressed like a little woman!"

He had simply slipped on a long nightgown with an insertion front, a 
pair of worked drawers and the dressing jacket, which was a long 
cambric garment trimmed with lace.  Thus attiredmade 
for him, eh?  All except the bodice part, which is too large.  He 
hasn't got as much as I have, poor, dear Zizi!"

"Oh, to be sure, I'm a bit wanting there," murmured Georges with a 
smile.

All three grew very merry about it.  Nana had set to work buttoning 
the dressing jacket from top to bottom so as to make him quite 
decent.  Then she turned him round as though he were a doll, gave 
him little thumps, made the skirt stand well out behind.  After 
which she asked him questions.  Was he comfortable?  Did he feel 
warm?  Zounds, yes, he was comfortable!  Nothing fitted more closely 
and warmly than a woman's shift; had he been able, he would always 
have worn one.  He moved round and about therein, delighted with the 
fine linen and the soft touch of that unmanly garment, in the folds 
of which he thought he discovered some of Nana's own warm life.

Meanwhile Zoe had taken the soaked clothes down to the kitchen in 
order to dry them as quickly as possible in front of a vine-branch 
fire.  Then Georges, as he lounged in an easy chair, ventured to 
make a confession.

"I say, are you going to feed this evening?  I'm dying of hunger.  I 
haven't dined."

Nana was vexed.  The great silly thing to go sloping off from 
Mamma's with an empty stomach, just to chuck himself into a hole 
full of water!  But she was as hungry as a hunter too.  They 
certainly must feed!  Only they would have to eat what they could 
get.  Whereupon a round table was rolled up in front of the fire, 
and the queerest of dinners was improvised thereon.  Zoe ran down to 
the gardener's, he having cooked a mess of cabbage soup in case 
Madame should not dine at Orleans before her arrival.  Madame, 
indeed, had forgotten to tell him what he was to get ready in the 
letter she had sent him.  Fortunately the cellar was well furnished.  
Accordingly they had cabbage soup, followed by a piece of bacon.  
Then Nana rummaged in her handbag and found quite a heap of 
provisions which she had taken the precaution of stuffing into it.  
There was a Strasbourg pate, for instance, and a bag of sweet-meats 
and some oranges.  So they both ate away like ogres and, while they 
satisfied their healthy young appetites, treated one another with 
easy good fellowship.  Nana kept calling Georges "dear old girl," a 
form of address which struck her as at once tender and familiar.  At 
dessert, in order not to give Zoe any more trouble, they used the 
same spoon turn and turn about while demolishing a pot of preserves 
they had discovered at the top of a cupboard.

"Oh, you dear old girl!" said Nana, pushing back the round table.  
"I haven't made such a good dinner these ten years past!"

Yet it was growing late, and she wanted to send her boy off for fear 
he should be suspected of all sorts of things.  But he kept 
declaring that he had plenty of time to spare.  For the matter of 
that, his clothes were not drying well, and Zoe averred that it 
would take an hour longer at least, and as she was dropping with 
sleep after the fatigues of the journey, they sent her off to bed.  
After which they were alone in the silent house.

It was a very charming evening.  The fire was dying out amid glowing 
embers, and in the great blue room, where Zoe had made up the bed 
before going upstairs, the air felt a little oppressive.  Nana, 
overcome by the heavy warmth, got up to open the window for a few 
minutes, and as she did so she uttered a little cry.

"Great heavens, how beautiful it is!  Look, dear old girl!"

Georges had come up, and as though the window bar had not been 
sufficiently wide, he put his arm round Nana's waist and rested his 
head against her shoulder.  The weather had undergone a brisk 
change: the skies were clearing, and a full moon lit up the country 
with its golden disk of light.  A sovereign quiet reigned over the 
valley.  It seemed wider and larger as it opened on the immense 
distances of the plain, where the trees loomed like little shadowy 
islands amid a shining and waveless lake.  And Nana grew 
tenderhearted, felt herself a child again.  Most surely she had 
dreamed of nights like this at an epoch which she could not recall.  
Since leaving the train every object of sensation--the wide 
countryside, the green things with their pungent scents, the house, 
the vegetables--had stirred her to such a degree that now it seemed 
to her as if she had left Paris twenty years ago.  Yesterday's 
existence was far, far away, and she was full of sensations of which 
she had no previous experience.  Georges, meanwhile, was giving her 
neck little coaxing kisses, and this again added to her sweet 
unrest.  With hesitating hand she pushed him from her, as though he 
were a child whose affectionate advances were fatiguing, and once 
more she told him that he ought to take his departure.  He did not 
gainsay her.  All in good time--he would go all in good time!

But a bird raised its song and again was silent.  It was a robin in 
an elder tree below the window.

"Wait one moment," whispered Georges; "the lamp's frightening him.  
I'll put it out."

And when he came back and took her waist again he added:

"We'll relight it in a minute."

Then as she listened to the robin and the boy pressed against her 
side, Nana remembered.  Ah yes, it was in novels that she had got to 
know all this!  In other days she would have given her heart to have 
a full moon and robins and a lad dying of love for her.  Great God, 
she could have cried, so good and charming did it all seem to her!  
Beyond a doubt she had been born to live honestly!  So she pushed 
Georges away again, and he grew yet bolder.

"No, let me be.  I don't care about it.  It would be very wicked at 
your age.  Now listen--I'll always be your mamma."

A sudden feeling of shame overcame her.  She was blushing 
exceedingly, and yet not a soul could see her.  The room behind them 
was full of black night while the country stretched before them in 
silence and lifeless solitude.  Never had she known such a sense of 
shame before.  Little by little she felt her power of resistance 
ebbing away, and that despite her embarrassed efforts to the 
contrary.  That disguise of his, that woman's shift and that 
dressing jacket set her laughing again.  It was as though a girl 
friend were teasing her.

"Oh, it's not right; it's not right!" she stammered after a last 
effort.

And with that, in face of the lovely night, she sank like a young 
virgin into the arms of this mere child.  The house slept.

Next morning at Les Fondettes, when the bell rang for lunch, the 
dining-room table was no longer too big for the company.  Fauchery 
and Daguenet had been driven up together in one carriage, and after 
them another had arrived with the Count de Vandeuvres, who had 
followed by the next train.  Georges was the last to come 
downstairs.  He was looking a little pale, and his eyes were sunken, 
but in answer to questions he said that he was much better, though 
he was still somewhat shaken by the violence of the attack.  Mme 
Hugon looked into his eyes with an anxious smile and adjusted his 
hair which had been carelessly combed that morning, but he drew back 
as though embarrassed by this tender little action.  During the meal 
she chaffed Vandeuvres very pleasantly and declared that she had 
expected him for five years past.

"Well, here you are at last!  How have you managed it?"

Vandeuvres took her remarks with equal pleasantry.  He told her that 
he had lost a fabulous sum of money at the club yesterday and 
thereupon had come away with the intention of ending up in the 
country.

"'Pon my word, yes, if only you can find me an heiress in these 
rustic parts!  There must be delightful women hereabouts."

The old lady rendered equal thanks to Daguenet and Fauchery for 
having been so good as to accept her son's invitation, and then to 
her great and joyful surprise she saw the Marquis de Chouard enter 
the room.  A third carriage had brought him.

"Dear me, you've made this your trysting place today!" she cried.  
"You've passed word round!  But what's happening?  For years I've 
never succeeded in bringing you all together, and now you all drop 
in at once.  Oh, I certainly don't complain."

Another place was laid.  Fauchery found himself next the Countess 
Sabine, whose liveliness and gaiety surprised him when he remembered 
her drooping, languid state in the austere Rue Miromesnil drawing 
room.  Daguenet, on the other hand, who was seated on Estelle's 
left, seemed slightly put out by his propinquity to that tall, 
silent girl.  The angularity of her elbows was disagreeable to him.  
Muffat and Chouard had exchanged a sly glance while Vandeuvres 
continued joking about his coming marriage.

"Talking of ladies," Mme Hugon ended by saying, "I have a new 
neighbor whom you probably know."

And she mentioned Nana.  Vandeuvres affected the liveliest 
astonishment.

"Well, that is strange!  Nana's property near here!"

Fauchery and Daguenet indulged in a similar demonstration while the 
Marquis de Chouard discussed the breast of a chicken without 
appearing to comprehend their meaning.  Not one of the men had 
smiled.

"Certainly," continued the old lady, "and the person in question 
arrived at La Mignotte yesterday evening, as I was saying she would.  
I got my information from the gardener this morning."

At these words the gentlemen could not conceal their very real 
surprise.  They all looked up.  Eh?  What?  Nana had come down!  But 
they were only expecting her next day; they were privately under the 
impression that they would arrive before her!  Georges alone sat 
looking at his glass with drooped eyelids and a tired expression.  
Ever since the beginning of lunch he had seemed to be sleeping with 
open eyes and a vague smile on his lips.

"Are you still in pain, my Zizi?" asked his mother, who had been 
gazing at him throughout the meal.

He started and blushed as he said that he was very well now, but the 
worn-out insatiate expression of a girl who has danced too much did 
not fade from his face.

"What's the matter with your neck?" resumed Mme Hugon in an alarmed 
tone.  "It's all red."

He was embarrassed and stammered.  He did not know--he had nothing 
the matter with his neck.  Then drawing his shirt collar up:

"Ah yes, some insect stung me there!"

The Marquis de Chouard had cast a sidelong glance at the little red 
place.  Muffat, too, looked at Georges.  The company was finishing 
lunch and planning various excursions.  Fauchery was growing 
increasingly excited with the Countess Sabine's laughter.  As he was 
passing her a dish of fruit their hands touched, and for one second 
she looked at him with eyes so full of dark meaning that he once 
more thought of the secret which had been communicated to him one 
evening after an uproarious dinner.  Then, too, she was no longer 
the same woman.  Something was more pronounced than of old, and her 
gray foulard gown which fitted loosely over her shoulders added a 
touch of license to her delicate, high-strung elegance.

When they rose from the table Daguenet remained behind with Fauchery 
in order to impart to him the following crude witticism about 
Estelle: "A nice broomstick that to shove into a man's hands!"  
Nevertheless, he grew serious when the journalist told him the 
amount she was worth in the way of dowry.

"Four hundred thousand francs."

"And the mother?" queried Fauchery.  "She's all right, eh?"

"Oh, SHE'LL work the oracle!  But it's no go, my dear man!"

"Bah!  How are we to know?  We must wait and see."

It was impossible to go out that day, for the rain was still falling 
in heavy showers.  Georges had made haste to disappear from the 
scene and had double-locked his door.  These gentlemen avoided 
mutual explanations, though they were none of them deceived as to 
the reasons which had brought them together.  Vandeuvres, who had 
had a very bad time at play, had really conceived the notion of 
lying fallow for a season, and he was counting on Nana's presence in 
the neighborhood as a safeguard against excessive boredom.  Fauchery 
had taken advantage of the holidays granted him by Rose, who just 
then was extremely busy.  He was thinking of discussing a second 
notice with Nana, in case country air should render them 
reciprocally affectionate.  Daguenet, who had been just a little 
sulky with her since Steiner had come upon the scene, was dreaming 
of resuming the old connection or at least of snatching some 
delightful opportunities if occasion offered.  As to the Marquis de 
Chouard, he was watching for times and seasons.  But among all those 
men who were busy following in the tracks of Venus--a Venus with the 
rouge scarce washed from her cheeks--Muffat was at once the most 
ardent and the most tortured by the novel sensations of desire and 
fear and anger warring in his anguished members.  A formal promise 
had been made him; Nana was awaiting him.  Why then had she taken 
her departure two days sooner than was expected?

He resolved to betake himself to La Mignotte after dinner that same 
evening.  At night as the count was leaving the park Georges fled 
forth after him.  He left him to follow the road to Gumieres, 
crossed the Choue, rushed into Nana's presence, breathless, furious 
and with tears in his eyes.  Ah yes, he understood everything!  That 
old fellow now on his way to her was coming to keep an appointment!  
Nana was dumfounded by this ebullition of jealousy, and, greatly 
moved by the way things were turning out, she took him in her arms 
and comforted him to the best of her ability.  Oh no, he was quite 
beside the mark; she was expecting no one.  If the gentleman came it 
would not be her fault.  What a great ninny that Zizi was to be 
taking on so about nothing at all!  By her child's soul she swore 
she loved nobody except her own Georges.  And with that she kissed 
him and wiped away his tears.

"Now just listen!  You'll see that it's all for your sake," she went 
on when he had grown somewhat calmer.  "Steiner has arrived--he's up 
above there now.  You know, duckie, I can't turn HIM out of doors."

"Yes, I know; I'm not talking of HIM," whispered the boy.

"Very well then, I've stuck him into the room at the end.  I said I 
was out of sorts.  He's unpacking his trunk.  Since nobody's seen 
you, be quick and run up and hide in my room and wait for me.

Georges sprang at her and threw his arms round her neck.  It was 
true after all!  She loved him a little!  So they would put the lamp 
out as they did yesterday and be in the dark till daytime!  Then as 
the front-door bell sounded he quietly slipped away.  Upstairs in 
the bedroom he at once took off his shoes so as not to make any 
noise and straightway crouched down behind a curtain and waited 
soberly.

Nana welcomed Count Muffat, who, though still shaken with passion, 
was now somewhat embarrassed.  She had pledged her word to him and 
would even have liked to keep it since he struck her as a serious, 
practicable lover.  But truly, who could have foreseen all that 
happened yesterday?  There was the voyage and the house she had 
never set eyes on before and the arrival of the drenched little 
lover!  How sweet it had all seemed to her, and how delightful it 
would be to continue in it!  So much the worse for the gentleman!  
For three months past she had been keeping him dangling after her 
while she affected conventionality in order the further to inflame 
him.  Well, well!  He would have to continue dangling, and if he 
didn't like that he could go!  She would sooner have thrown up 
everything than have played false to Georges.

The count had seated himself with all the ceremonious politeness 
becoming a country caller.  Only his hands were trembling slightly.  
Lust, which Nana's skillful tactics daily exasperated, had at last 
wrought terrible havoc in that sanguine, uncontaminated nature.  The 
grave man, the chamberlain who was wont to tread the state 
apartments at the Tuileries with slow and dignified step, was now 
nightly driven to plunge his teeth into his bolster, while with sobs 
of exasperation he pictured to himself a sensual shape which never 
changed.  But this time he was determined to make an end of the 
torture.  Coming along the highroad in the deep quiet of the 
gloaming, he had meditated a fierce course of action.  And the 
moment he had finished his opening remarks he tried to take hold of 
Nana with both hands.

"No, no!  Take care!" she said simply.  She was not vexed; nay, she 
even smiled.

He caught her again, clenching his teeth as he did so.  Then as she 
struggled to get free he coarsely and crudely reminded her that he 
had come to stay the night.  Though much embarrassed at this, Nana 
did not cease to smile.  She took his hands and spoke very 
familiarly in order to soften her refusal.

"Come now, darling, do be quiet!  Honor bright, I can't: Steiner's 
upstairs."

But he was beside himself.  Never yet had she seen a man in such a 
state.  She grew frightened and put her hand over his mouth in order 
to stifle his cries.  Then in lowered tones she besought him to be 
quiet and to let her alone.  Steiner was coming downstairs.  Things 
were getting stupid, to be sure!  When Steiner entered the room he 
heard Nana remarking:

"I adore the country."

She was lounging comfortably back in her deep easy chair, and she 
turned round and interrupted herself.

"It's Monsieur le Comte Muffat, darling.  He saw a light here while 
he was strolling past, and he came in to bid us welcome."

The two men clasped hands.  Muffat, with his face in shadow, stood 
silent for a moment or two.  Steiner seemed sulky.  Then they 
chatted about Paris: business there was at a standstill; abominable 
things had been happening on 'change.  When a quarter of an hour had 
elapsed Muffat took his departure, and, as the young woman was 
seeing him to the door, he tried without success to make an 
assignation for the following night.  Steiner went up to bed almost 
directly afterward, grumbling, as he did so, at the everlasting 
little ailments that seemed to afflict the genus courtesan.  The two 
old boys had been packed off at last!  When she was able to rejoin 
him Nana found Georges still hiding exemplarily behind the curtain.  
The room was dark.  He pulled her down onto the floor as she sat 
near him, and together they began playfully rolling on the ground, 
stopping now and again and smothering their laughter with kisses 
whenever they struck their bare feet against some piece of 
furniture.  Far away, on the road to Gumieres, Count Muffat walked 
slowly home and, hat in hand, bathed his burning forehead in the 
freshness and silence of the night.

During the days that followed Nana found life adorable.  In the 
lad's arms she was once more a girl of fifteen, and under the 
caressing influence of this renewed childhood love's white flower 
once more blossomed forth in a nature which had grown hackneyed and 
disgusted in the service of the other sex.  She would experience 
sudden fits of shame, sudden vivid emotions, which left her 
trembling.  She wanted to laugh and to cry, and she was beset by 
nervous, maidenly feelings, mingled with warm desires that made her 
blush again.  Never yet had she felt anything comparable to this.  
The country filled her with tender thoughts.  As a little girl she 
had long wished to dwell in a meadow, tending a goat, because one 
day on the talus of the fortifications she had seen a goat bleating 
at the end of its tether.  Now this estate, this stretch of land 
belonging to her, simply swelled her heart to bursting, so utterly 
had her old ambition been surpassed.  Once again she tasted the 
novel sensations experienced by chits of girls, and at night when 
she went upstairs, dizzy with her day in the open air and 
intoxicated by the scent of green leaves, and rejoined her Zizi 
behind the curtain, she fancied herself a schoolgirl enjoying a 
holiday escapade.  It was an amour, she thought, with a young cousin 
to whom she was going to be married.  And so she trembled at the 
slightest noise and dread lest parents should hear her, while making 
the delicious experiments and suffering the voluptuous terrors 
attendant on a girl's first slip from the path of virtue.

Nana in those days was subject to the fancies a sentimental girl 
will indulge in.  She would gaze at the moon for hours.  One night 
she had a mind to go down into the garden with Georges when all the 
household was asleep.  When there they strolled under the trees, 
their arms round each other's waists, and finally went and laid down 
in the grass, where the dew soaked them through and through.  On 
another occasion, after a long silence up in the bedroom, she fell 
sobbing on the lad's neck, declaring in broken accents that she was 
afraid of dying.  She would often croon a favorite ballad of Mme 
Lerat's, which was full of flowers and birds.  The song would melt 
her to tears, and she would break off in order to clasp Georges in a 
passionate embrace and to extract from him vows of undying 
affection.  In short she was extremely silly, as she herself would 
admit when they both became jolly good fellows again and sat up 
smoking cigarettes on the edge of the bed, dangling their bare legs 
over it the while and tapping their heels against its wooden side.

But what utterly melted the young woman's heart was Louiset's 
arrival.  She had an access of maternal affection which was as 
violent as a mad fit.  She would carry off her boy into the sunshine 
outside to watch him kicking about; she would dress him like a 
little prince and roll with him in the grass.  The moment he arrived 
she decided that he was to sleep near her, in the room next hers, 
where Mme Lerat, whom the country greatly affected, used to begin 
snoring the moment her head touched the pillow.  Louiset did not 
hurt Zizi's position in the least.  On the contrary, Nana said that 
she had now two children, and she treated them with the same wayward 
tenderness.  At night, more than ten times running, she would leave 
Zizi to go and see if Louiset were breathing properly, but on her 
return she would re-embrace her Zizi and lavish on him the caresses 
that had been destined for the child.  She played at being Mamma 
while he wickedly enjoyed being dandled in the arms of the great 
wench and allowed himself to be rocked to and fro like a baby that 
is being sent to sleep.  It was all so delightful, and Nana was so 
charmed with her present existence, that she seriously proposed to 
him never to leave the country.  They would send all the other 
people away, and he, she and the child would live alone.  And with 
that they would make a thousand plans till daybreak and never once 
hear Mme Lerat as she snored vigorously after the fatigues of a day 
spent in picking country flowers.

This charming existence lasted nearly a week.  Count Muffat used to 
come every evening and go away again with disordered face and 
burning hands.  One evening he was not even received, as Steiner had 
been obliged to run up to Paris.  He was told that Madame was not 
well.  Nana grew daily more disgusted at the notion of deceiving 
Georges.  He was such an innocent lad, and he had such faith in her!  
She would have looked on herself as the lowest of the low had she 
played him false.  Besides, it would have sickened her to do so!  
Zoe, who took her part in this affair in mute disdain, believed that 
Madame was growing senseless.

On the sixth day a band of visitors suddenly blundered into Nana's 
idyl.  She had, indeed, invited a whole swarm of people under the 
belief that none of them would come.  And so one fine afternoon she 
was vastly astonished and annoyed to see an omnibus full of people 
pulling up outside the gate of La Mignotte.

"It's us!" cried Mignon, getting down first from the conveyance and 
extracting then his sons Henri and Charles.

Labordette thereupon appeared and began handing out an interminable 
file of ladies--Lucy Stewart, Caroline Hequet, Tatan Nene, Maria 
Blond.  Nana was in hopes that they would end there, when La Faloise 
sprang from the step in order to receive Gaga and her daughter 
Amelie in his trembling arms.  That brought the number up to eleven 
people.  Their installation proved a laborious undertaking.  There 
were five spare rooms at La Mignotte, one of which was already 
occupied by Mme Lerat and Louiset.  The largest was devoted to the 
Gaga and La Faloise establishment, and it was decided that Amelie 
should sleep on a truckle bed in the dressing room at the side.  
Mignon and his two sons had the third room.  Labordette the fourth.  
There thus remained one room which was transformed into a dormitory 
with four beds in it for Lucy, Caroline, Tatan and Maria.  As to 
Steiner, he would sleep on the divan in the drawing room.  At the 
end of an hour, when everyone was duly settled, Nana, who had begun 
by being furious, grew enchanted at the thought of playing hostess 
on a grand scale.  The ladies complimented her on La Mignotte.  
"It's a stunning property, my dear!"  And then, too, they brought 
her quite a whiff of Parisian air, and talking all together with 
bursts of laughter and exclamation and emphatic little gestures, 
they gave her all the petty gossip of the week just past.  By the 
by, and how about Bordenave?  What had he said about her prank?  Oh, 
nothing much!  After bawling about having her brought back by the 
police, he had simply put somebody else in her place at night.  
Little Violaine was the understudy, and she had even obtained a very 
pretty success as the Blonde Venus.  Which piece of news made Nana 
rather serious.

It was only four o'clock in the afternoon, and there was some talk 
of taking a stroll around.

"Oh, I haven't told you," said Nana, "I was just off to get up 
potatoes when you arrived."

Thereupon they all wanted to go and dig potatoes without even 
changing their dresses first.  It was quite a party.  The gardener 
and two helpers were already in the potato field at the end of the 
grounds.  The ladies knelt down and began fumbling in the mold with 
their beringed fingers, shouting gaily whenever they discovered a 
potato of exceptional size.  It struck them as so amusing!  But 
Tatan Nene was in a state of triumph!  So many were the potatoes she 
had gathered in her youth that she forgot herself entirely and gave 
the others much good advice, treating them like geese the while.  
The gentlemen toiled less strenuously.  Mignon looked every inch the 
good citizen and father and made his stay in the country an occasion 
for completing his boys' education.  Indeed, he spoke to them of 
Parmentier!

Dinner that evening was wildly hilarious.  The company ate 
ravenously.  Nana, in a state of great elevation, had a warm 
disagreement with her butler, an individual who had been in service 
at the bishop's palace in Orleans.  The ladies smoked over their 
coffee.  An earsplitting noise of merrymaking issued from the open 
windows and died out far away under the serene evening sky while 
peasants, belated in the lanes, turned and looked at the flaring 
rooms.

"It's most tiresome that you're going back the day after tomorrow," 
said Nana.  "But never mind, we'll get up an excursion all the 
same!"

They decided to go on the morrow, Sunday, and visit the ruins of the 
old Abbey of Chamont, which were some seven kilometers distant.  
Five carriages would come out from Orleans, take up the company 
after lunch and bring them back to dinner at La Mignotte at about 
seven.  It would be delightful.

That evening, as his wont was, Count Muffat mounted the hill to ring 
at the outer gate.  But the brightly lit windows and the shouts of 
laughter astonished him.  When, however, he recognized Mignon's 
voice, he understood it all and went off, raging at this new 
obstacle, driven to extremities, bent on some violent act.  Georges 
passed through a little door of which he had the key, slipped along 
the staircase walls and went quietly up into Nana's room.  Only he 
had to wait for her till past midnight.  She appeared at last in a 
high state of intoxication and more maternal even than on the 
previous nights.  Whenever she had drunk anything she became so 
amorous as to be absurd.  Accordingly she now insisted on his 
accompanying her to the Abbey of Chamont.  But he stood out against 
this; he was afraid of being seen.  If he were to be seen driving 
with her there would be an atrocious scandal.  But she burst into 
tears and evinced the noisy despair of a slighted woman.  And he 
thereupon consoled her and formally promised to be one of the party.

"So you do love me very much," she blurted out.  "Say you love me 
very much.  Oh, my darling old bear, if I were to die would you feel 
it very much?  Confess!"

At Les Fondettes the near neighborhood of Nana had utterly 
disorganized the party.  Every morning during lunch good Mme Hugon 
returned to the subject despite herself, told her guests the news 
the gardener had brought her and gave evidence of the absorbing 
curiosity with which notorious courtesans are able to inspire even 
the worthiest old ladies.  Tolerant though she was, she was revolted 
and maddened by a vague presentiment of coming ill, which frightened 
her in the evenings as thoroughly as if a wild beast had escaped 
from a menagerie and were known to be lurking in the countryside.

She began trying to pick a little quarrel with her guests, whom she 
each and all accused of prowling round La Mignotte.  Count 
Vandeuvres had been seen laughing on the highroad with a golden-
haired lady, but he defended himself against the accusation; he 
denied that it was Nana, the fact being that Lucy had been with him 
and had told him how she had just turned her third prince out of 
doors.  The Marquis de Chouard used also to go out every day, but 
his excuse was doctor's orders.  Toward Daguenet and Fauchery Mme 
Hugon behaved unjustly too.  The former especially never left Les 
Fondettes, for he had given up the idea of renewing the old 
connection and was busy paying the most respectful attentions to 
Estelle.  Fauchery also stayed with the Muffat ladies.  On one 
occasion only he had met Mignon with an armful of flowers, putting 
his sons through a course of botanical instruction in a by-path.  
The two men had shaken hands and given each other the news about 
Rose.  She was perfectly well and happy; they had both received a 
letter from her that morning in which she besought them to profit by 
the fresh country air for some days longer.  Among all her guests 
the old lady spared only Count Muffat and Georges.  The count, who 
said he had serious business in Orleans, could certainly not be 
running after the bad woman, and as to Georges, the poor child was 
at last causing her grave anxiety, seeing that every evening he was 
seized with atrocious sick headaches which kept him to his bed in 
broad daylight.

Meanwhile Fauchery had become the Countess Sabine's faithful 
attendant in the absence during each afternoon of Count Muffat.  
Whenever they went to the end of the park he carried her campstool 
and her sunshade.  Besides, he amused her with the original 
witticisms peculiar to a second-rate journalist, and in so doing he 
prompted her to one of those sudden intimacies which are allowable 
in the country.  She had apparently consented to it from the first, 
for she had grown quite a girl again in the society of a young man 
whose noisy humor seemed unlikely to compromize her.  But now and 
again, when for a second or two they found themselves alone behind 
the shrubs, their eyes would meet; they would pause amid their 
laughter, grow suddenly serious and view one another darkly, as 
though they had fathomed and divined their inmost hearts.

On Friday a fresh place had to be laid at lunch time.  M. Theophile 
Venot, whom Mme Hugon remembered to have invited at the Muffats' 
last winter, had just arrived.  He sat stooping humbly forward and 
behaved with much good nature, as became a man of no account, nor 
did he seem to notice the anxious deference with which he was 
treated.  When he had succeeded in getting the company to forget his 
presence he sat nibbling small lumps of sugar during dessert, 
looking sharply up at Daguenet as the latter handed Estelle 
strawberries and listening to Fauchery, who was making the countess 
very merry over one of his anecdotes.  Whenever anyone looked at HIM 
he smiled in his quiet way.  When the guests rose from table he took 
the count's arm and drew him into the park.  He was known to have 
exercised great influence over the latter ever since the death of 
his mother.  Indeed, singular stories were told about the kind of 
dominion which the ex-lawyer enjoyed in that household.  Fauchery, 
whom his arrival doubtless embarrassed, began explaining to Georges 
and Daguenet the origin of the man's wealth.  It was a big lawsuit 
with the management of which the Jesuits had entrusted him in days 
gone by.  In his opinion the worthy man was a terrible fellow 
despite his gentle, plump face and at this time of day had his 
finger in all the intrigues of the priesthood.  The two young men 
had begun joking at this, for they thought the little old gentleman 
had an idiotic expression.  The idea of an unknown Venot, a gigantic 
Venot, acting for the whole body of the clergy, struck them in the 
light of a comical invention.  But they were silenced when, still 
leaning on the old man's arm, Count Muffat reappeared with blanched 
cheeks and eyes reddened as if by recent weeping.

I bet they've been chatting about hell," muttered Fauchery in a 
bantering tone.

The Countess Sabine overheard the remark.  She turned her head 
slowly, and their eyes met in that long gaze with which they were 
accustomed to sound one another prudently before venturing once for 
all.

After the breakfast it was the guests' custom to betake themselves 
to a little flower garden on a terrace overlooking the plain.  This 
Sunday afternoon was exquisitely mild.  There had been signs of rain 
toward ten in the morning, but the sky, without ceasing to be 
covered, had, as it were, melted into milky fog, which now hung like 
a cloud of luminous dust in the golden sunlight.  Soon Mme Hugon 
proposed that they should step down through a little doorway below 
the terrace and take a walk on foot in the direction of Gumieres and 
as far as the Choue.  She was fond of walking and, considering her 
threescore years, was very active.  Besides, all her guests declared 
that there was no need to drive.  So in a somewhat straggling order 
they reached the wooden bridge over the river.  Fauchery and 
Daguenet headed the column with the Muffat ladies and were followed 
by the count and the marquis, walking on either side of Mme Hugon, 
while Vandeuvres, looking fashionable and out of his element on the 
highroad, marched in the rear, smoking a cigar.  M. Venot, now 
slackening, now hastening his pace, passed smilingly from group to 
group, as though bent on losing no scrap of conversation.

"To think of poor dear Georges at Orleans!" said Mme Hugon.  "He was 
anxious to consult old Doctor Tavernier, who never goes out now, on 
the subject of his sick headaches.  Yes, you were not up, as he went 
off before seven o'clock.  But it'll be a change for him all the 
same."

She broke off, exclaiming:

"Why, what's making them stop on the bridge?"

The fact was the ladies and Fauchery and Daguenet were standing 
stock-still on the crown of the bridge.  They seemed to be 
hesitating as though some obstacle or other rendered them uneasy and 
yet the way lay clear before them.

"Go on!" cried the count.

They never moved and seemed to be watching the approach of something 
which the rest had not yet observed.  Indeed the road wound 
considerably and was bordered by a thick screen of poplar trees.  
Nevertheless, a dull sound began to grow momentarily louder, and 
soon there was a noise of wheels, mingled with shouts of laughter 
and the cracking of whips.  Then suddenly five carriages came into 
view, driving one behind the other.  They were crowded to bursting, 
and bright with a galaxy of white, blue and pink costumes.

"What is it?" said Mme Hugon in some surprise.

Then her instinct told her, and she felt indignant at such an 
untoward invasion of her road.

"Oh, that woman!" she murmured.  "Walk on, pray walk on.  Don't 
appear to notice."

But it was too late.  The five carriages which were taking Nana and 
her circle to the ruins of Chamont rolled on to the narrow wooden 
bridge.  Fauchery, Daguenet and the Muffat ladies were forced to 
step backward, while Mme Hugon and the others had also to stop in 
Indian file along the roadside.  It was a superb ride past!  The 
laughter in the carriages had ceased, and faces were turned with an 
expression of curiosity.  The rival parties took stock of each other 
amid a silence broken only by the measured trot of the horses.  In 
the first carriage Maria Blond and Tatan Nene were lolling backward 
like a pair of duchesses, their skirts swelling forth over the 
wheels, and as they passed they cast disdainful glances at the 
honest women who were walking afoot.  Then came Gaga, filling up a 
whole seat and half smothering La Faloise beside her so that little 
but his small anxious face was visible.  Next followed Caroline 
Hequet with Labordette, Lucy Stewart with Mignon and his boys and at 
the close of all Nana in a victoria with Steiner and on a bracket 
seat in front of her that poor, darling Zizi, with his knees jammed 
against her own.

"It's the last of them, isn't it?" the countess placidly asked 
Fauchery, pretending at the same time not to recognize Nana.

The wheel of the victoria came near grazing her, but she did not 
step back.  The two women had exchanged a deeply significant glance.  
It was, in fact, one of those momentary scrutinies which are at once 
complete and definite.  As to the men, they behaved unexceptionably.  
Fauchery and Daguenet looked icy and recognized no one.  The 
marquis, more nervous than they and afraid of some farcical 
ebullition on the part of the ladies, had plucked a blade of grass 
and was rolling it between his fingers.  Only Vandeuvres, who had 
stayed somewhat apart from the rest of the company, winked 
imperceptibly at Lucy, who smiled at him as she passed.

"Be careful!" M. Venot had whispered as he stood behind Count 
Muffat.

The latter in extreme agitation gazed after this illusive vision of 
Nana while his wife turned slowly round and scrutinized him.  Then 
he cast his eyes on the ground as though to escape the sound of 
galloping hoofs which were sweeping away both his senses and his 
heart.  He could have cried aloud in his agony, for, seeing Georges 
among Nana's skirts, he understood it all now.  A mere child!  He 
was brokenhearted at the thought that she should have preferred a 
mere child to him!  Steiner was his equal, but that child!

Mme Hugon, in the meantime, had not at once recognized Georges.  
Crossing the bridge, he was fain to jump into the river, but Nana's 
knees restrained him.  Then white as a sheet and icy cold, he sat 
rigidly up in his place and looked at no one.  It was just possible 
no one would notice him.

"Oh, my God!" said the old lady suddenly.  "Georges is with her!"

The carriages had passed quite through the uncomfortable crowd of 
people who recognized and yet gave no sign of recognition.  The 
short critical encounter seemed to have been going on for ages.  And 
now the wheels whirled away the carriageloads of girls more gaily 
than ever.  Toward the fair open country they went, amid the 
buffetings of the fresh air of heaven.  Bright-colored fabrics 
fluttered in the wind, and the merry laughter burst forth anew as 
the voyagers began jesting and glancing back at the respectable 
folks halting with looks of annoyance at the roadside.  Turning 
round, Nana could see the walking party hesitating and then 
returning the way they had come without crossing the bridge.  Mme 
Hugon was leaning silently on Count Muffat's arm, and so sad was her 
look that no one dared comfort her.

"I say, did you see Fauchery, dear?" Nana shouted to Lucy, who was 
leaning out of the carriage in front.  "What a brute he was!  He 
shall pay out for that.  And Paul, too, a fellow I've been so kind 
to!  Not a sign!  They're polite, I'm sure."

And with that she gave Steiner a terrible dressing, he having 
ventured to suggest that the gentlemen's attitude had been quite as 
it should be.  So then they weren't even worth a bow?  The first 
blackguard that came by might insult them?  Thanks!  He was the 
right sort, too, he was!  It couldn't be better!  One ought always 
to bow to a woman.

"Who's the tall one?" asked Lucy at random, shouting through the 
noise of the wheels.

"It's the Countess Muffat," answered Steiner.

"There now!  I suspected as much," said Nana.  "Now, my dear fellow, 
it's all very well her being a countess, for she's no better than 
she should be.  Yes, yes, she's no better that she should be.  You 
know, I've got an eye for such things, I have!  And now I know your 
countess as well as if I had been at the making of her!  I'll bet 
you that she's the mistress of that viper Fauchery!  I tell you, 
she's his mistress!  Between women you guess that sort of thing at 
once!"

Steiner shrugged his shoulders.  Since the previous day his 
irritation had been hourly increasing.  He had received letters 
which necessitated his leaving the following morning, added to which 
he did not much appreciate coming down to the country in order to 
sleep on the drawing-room divan.

"And this poor baby boy!" Nana continued, melting suddenly at sight 
of Georges's pale face as he still sat rigid and breathless in front 
of her.

"D'you think Mamma recognized me?" he stammered at last.

"Oh, most surely she did!  Why, she cried out!  But it's my fault.  
He didn't want to come with us; I forced him to.  Now listen, Zizi, 
would you like me to write to your mamma?  She looks such a kind, 
decent sort of lady!  I'll tell her that I never saw you before and 
that it was Steiner who brought you with him for the first time 
today."

"No, no, don't write," said Georges in great anxiety.  "I'll explain 
it all myself.  Besides, if they bother me about it I shan't go home 
again."

But he continued plunged in thought, racking his brains for excuses 
against his return home in the evening.  The five carriages were 
rolling through a flat country along an interminable straight road 
bordered by fine trees.  The country was bathed in a silvery-gray 
atmosphere.  The ladies still continued shouting remarks from 
carriage to carriage behind the backs of the drivers, who chuckled 
over their extraordinary fares.  Occasionally one of them would rise 
to her feet to look at the landscape and, supporting herself on her 
neighbor's shoulder, would grow extremely excited till a sudden jolt 
brought her down to the seat again.  Caroline Hequet in the meantime 
was having a warm discussion with Labordette.  Both of them were 
agreed that Nana would be selling her country house before three 
months were out, and Caroline was urging Labordette to buy it back 
for her for as little as it was likely to fetch.  In front of them 
La Faloise, who was very amorous and could not get at Gaga's 
apoplectic neck, was imprinting kisses on her spine through her 
dress, the strained fabric of which was nigh splitting, while 
Amelie, perching stiffly on the bracket seat, was bidding them be 
quiet, for she was horrified to be sitting idly by, watching her 
mother being kissed.  In the next carriage Mignon, in order to 
astonish Lucy, was making his sons recite a fable by La Fontaine.  
Henri was prodigious at this exercise; he could spout you one 
without pause or hesitation.  But Maria Blond, at the head of the 
procession, was beginning to feel extremely bored.  She was tired of 
hoaxing that blockhead of a Tatan Nene with a story to the effect 
that the Parisian dairywomen were wont to fabricate eggs with a 
mixture of paste and saffron.  The distance was too great: were they 
never going to get to their destination?  And the question was 
transmitted from carriage to carriage and finally reached Nana, who, 
after questioning her driver, got up and shouted:

"We've not got a quarter of an hour more to go.  You see that church 
behind the trees down there?"

Then she continued:

"Do you know, it appears the owner of the Chateau de Chamont is an 
old lady of Napoleon's time?  Oh, SHE was a merry one!  At least, so 
Joseph told me, and he heard it from the servants at the bishop's 
palace.  There's no one like it nowadays, and for the matter of 
that, she's become goody-goody."

"What's her name?" asked Lucy.

"Madame d'Anglars."

"Irma d'Anglars--I knew her!" cried Gaga.

Admiring exclamations burst from the line of carriages and were 
borne down the wind as the horses quickened their trot.  Heads were 
stretched out in Gaga's direction; Maria Blond and Tatan Nene turned 
round and knelt on the seat while they leaned over the carriage 
hood, and the air was full of questions and cutting remarks, 
tempered by a certain obscure admiration.  Gaga had known her!  The 
idea filled them all with respect for that far-off past.

"Dear me, I was young then," continued Gaga.  "But never mind, I 
remember it all.  I saw her pass.  They said she was disgusting in 
her own house, but, driving in her carriage, she WAS just smart!  
And the stunning tales about her!  Dirty doings and money flung 
about like one o'clock!  I don't wonder at all that she's got a fine 
place.  Why, she used to clean out a man's pockets as soon as look 
at him.  Irma d'Anglars still in the land of the living!  Why, my 
little pets, she must be near ninety."

At this the ladies became suddenly serious.  Ninety years old!  The 
deuce, there wasn't one of them, as Lucy loudly declared, who would 
live to that age.  They were all done for.  Besides, Nana said she 
didn't want to make old bones; it wouldn't be amusing.  They were 
drawing near their destination, and the conversation was interrupted 
by the cracking of whips as the drivers put their horses to their 
best paces.  Yet amid all the noise Lucy continued talking and, 
suddenly changing the subject, urged Nana to come to town with them 
all to-morrow.  The exhibition was soon to close, and the ladies 
must really return to Paris, where the season was surpassing their 
expectations.  But Nana was obstinate.  She loathed Paris; she 
wouldn't set foot there yet!

"Eh, darling, we'll stay?" she said, giving Georges's knees a 
squeeze, as though  Steiner were of no account.

The carriages had pulled up abruptly, and in some surprise the 
company got out on some waste ground at the bottom of a small hill.  
With his whip one of the drivers had to point them out the ruins of 
the old Abbey of Chamont where they lay hidden among trees.  It was 
a great sell!  The ladies voted them silly.  Why, they were only a 
heap of old stones with briers growing over them and part of a 
tumble-down tower.  It really wasn't worth coming a couple of 
leagues to see that!  Then the driver pointed out to them the 
countryseat, the park of which stretched away from the abbey, and he 
advised them to take a little path and follow the walls surrounding 
it.  They would thus make the tour of the place while the carriages 
would go and await them in the village square.  It was a delightful 
walk, and the company agreed to the proposition.

"Lord love me, Irma knows how to take care of herself!" said Gaga, 
halting before a gate at the corner of the park wall abutting on the 
highroad.

All of them stood silently gazing at the enormous bush which stopped 
up the gateway.  Then following the little path, they skirted the 
park wall, looking up from time to time to admire the trees, whose 
lofty branches stretched out over them and formed a dense vault of 
greenery.  After three minutes or so they found themselves in front 
of a second gate.  Through this a wide lawn was visible, over which 
two venerable oaks cast dark masses of shadow.  Three minutes 
farther on yet another gate afforded them an extensive view of a 
great avenue, a perfect corridor of shadow, at the end of which a 
bright spot of sunlight gleamed like a star.  They stood in silent, 
wondering admiration, and then little by little exclamations burst 
from their lips.  They had been trying hard to joke about it all 
with a touch of envy at heart, but this decidedly and immeasurably 
impressed them.  What a genius that Irma was!  A sight like this 
gave you a rattling notion of the woman!  The trees stretched away 
and away, and there were endlessly recurrent patches of ivy along 
the wall with glimpses of lofty roofs and screens of poplars 
interspersed with dense masses of elms and aspens.  Was there no end 
to it then?  The ladies would have liked to catch sight of the 
mansion house, for they were weary of circling on and on, weary of 
seeing nothing but leafy recesses through every opening they came 
to.  They took the rails of the gate in their hands and pressed 
their faces against the ironwork.  And thus excluded and isolated, a 
feeling of respect began to overcome them as they thought of the 
castle lost to view in surrounding immensity.  Soon, being quite 
unused to walking, they grew tired.  And the wall did not leave off; 
at every turn of the small deserted path the same range of gray 
stones stretched ahead of them.  Some of them began to despair of 
ever getting to the end of it and began talking of returning.  But 
the more their long walk fatigued them, the more respectful they 
became, for at each successive step they were increasingly impressed 
by the tranquil, lordly dignity of the domain.

"It's getting silly, this is!" said Caroline Hequet, grinding her 
teeth.

Nana silenced her with a shrug.  For some moments past she had been 
rather pale and extremely serious and had not spoken a single word.  
Suddenly the path gave a final turn; the wall ended, and as they 
came out on the village square the mansion house stood before them 
on the farther side of its grand outer court.  All stopped to admire 
the proud sweep of the wide steps, the twenty frontage windows, the 
arrangement of the three wings, which were built of brick framed by 
courses of stone.  Henri IV had erewhile inhabited this historic 
mansion, and his room, with its great bed hung with Genoa velvet, 
was still preserved there.  Breathless with admiration, Nana gave a 
little childish sigh.

"Great God!" she whispered very quietly to herself.

But the party were deeply moved when Gaga suddenly announced that 
Irma herself was standing yonder in front of the church.  She 
recognized her perfectly.  She was as upright as of old, the hoary 
campaigner, and that despite her age, and she still had those eyes 
which flashed when she moved in that proud way of hers!  Vespers 
were just over, and for a second or two Madame stood in the church 
porch.  She was dressed in a dark brown silk and looked very simple 
and very tall, her venerable face reminding one of some old marquise 
who had survived the horrors of the Great Revolution.  In her right 
hand a huge Book of Hours shone in the sunlight, and very slowly she 
crossed the square, followed some fifteen paces off by a footman in 
livery.  The church was emptying, and all the inhabitants of Chamont 
bowed before her with extreme respect.  An old man even kissed her 
hand, and a woman wanted to fall on her knees.  Truly this was a 
potent queen, full of years and honors.  She mounted her flight of 
steps and vanished from view.

"That's what one attains to when one has methodical habits!" said 
Mignon with an air of conviction, looking at his sons and improving 
the occasion.

Then everybody said his say.  Labordette thought her extraordinarily 
well preserved.  Maria Blond let slip a foul expression and vexed 
Lucy, who declared that one ought to honor gray hairs.  All the 
women, to sum up, agreed that she was a perfect marvel.  Then the 
company got into their conveyances again.  From Chamont all the way 
to La Mignotte Nana remained silent.  She had twice turned round to 
look back at the house, and now, lulled by the sound of the wheels, 
she forgot that Steiner was at her side and that Georges was in 
front of her.  A vision had come up out of the twilight, and the 
great lady seemed still to be sweeping by with all the majesty of a 
potent queen, full of years and of honors.

That evening Georges re-entered Les Fondettes in time for dinner.  
Nana, who had grown increasingly absent-minded and singular in point 
of manner, had sent him to ask his mamma's forgiveness.  It was his 
plain duty, she remarked severely, growing suddenly solicitous for 
the decencies of family life.  She even made him swear not to return 
for the night; she was tired, and in showing proper obedience he was 
doing no more than his duty.  Much bored by this moral discourse, 
Georges appeared in his mother's presence with heavy heart and 
downcast head.

Fortunately for him his brother Philippe, a great merry devil of a 
military man, had arrived during the day, a fact which greatly 
curtailed the scene he was dreading.  Mme Hugon was content to look 
at him with eyes full of tears while Philippe, who had been put in 
possession of the facts, threatened to go and drag him home by the 
scruff of the neck if ever he went back into that woman's society.  
Somewhat comforted, Georges began slyly planning how to make his 
escape toward two o'clock next day in order to arrange about future 
meetings with Nana.

Nevertheless, at dinnertime the house party at Les Fondettes seemed 
not a little embarrassed.  Vandeuvres had given notice of departure, 
for he was anxious to take Lucy back to Paris with him.  He was 
amused at the idea of carrying off this girl whom he had known for 
ten years yet never desired.  The Marquis de Chouard bent over his 
plate and meditated on Gaga's young lady.  He could well remember 
dandling Lili on his knee.  What a way children had of shooting up!  
This little thing was becoming extremely plump!  But Count Muffat 
especially was silent and absorbed.  His cheeks glowed, and he had 
given Georges one long look.  Dinner over, he went upstairs, 
intending to shut himself in his bedroom, his pretext being a slight 
feverish attack.  M. Venot had rushed after him, and upstairs in the 
bedroom a scene ensued.  The count threw himself upon the bed and 
strove to stifle a fit of nervous sobbing in the folds of the pillow 
while M. Venot, in a soft voice, called him brother and advised him 
to implore heaven for mercy.  But he heard nothing: there was a 
rattle in his throat.  Suddenly he sprang off the bed and stammered:

"I am going there.  I can't resist any longer."

"Very well," said the old man, "I go with you."

As they left the house two shadows were vanishing into the dark 
depths of a garden walk, for every evening now Fauchery and the 
Countess Sabine left Daguenet to help Estelle make tea.  Once on the 
highroad the count walked so rapidly that his companion had to run 
in order to follow him.  Though utterly out of breath, the latter 
never ceased showering on him the most conclusive arguments against 
the temptations of the flesh.  But the other never opened his mouth 
as he hurried away into the night.  Arrived in front of La Mignotte, 
he said simply:

"I can't resist any longer.  Go!"

"God's will be done then!" muttered M. Venot.  "He uses every method 
to assure His final triumph.  Your sin will become His weapon."

At La Mignotte there was much wrangling during the evening meal.  
Nana had found a letter from Bordenave awaiting her, in which he 
advised rest, just as though he were anxious to be rid of her.  
Little Violaine, he said, was being encored twice nightly.  But when 
Mignon continued urging her to come away with them on the morrow 
Nana grew exasperated and declared that she did not intend taking 
advice from anybody.  In other ways, too, her behavior at table was 
ridiculously stuck up.  Mme Lerat having made some sharp little 
speech or other, she loudly announced that, God willing, she wasn't 
going to let anyone--no, not even her own aunt--make improper 
remarks in her presence.  After which she dreed her guests with 
honorable sentiments.  She seemed to be suffering from a fit of 
stupid right-mindedness, and she treated them all to projects of 
religious education for Louiset and to a complete scheme of 
regeneration for herself.  When the company began laughing she gave 
vent to profound opinions, nodding her head like a grocer's wife who 
knows what she is saying.  Nothing but order could lead to fortune!  
And so far as she was concerned, she had no wish to die like a 
beggar!  She set the ladies' teeth on edge.  They burst out in 
protest.  Could anyone have been converting Nana?  No, it was 
impossible!  But she sat quite still and with absent looks once more 
plunged into dreamland, where the vision of an extremely wealthy and 
greatly courted Nana rose up before her.

The household were going upstairs to bed when Muffat put in an 
appearance.  It was Labordette who caught sight of him in the 
garden.  He understood it all at once and did him a service, for he 
got Steiner out of the way and, taking his hand, led him along the 
dark corridor as far as Nana's bedroom.  In affairs of this kind 
Labordette was wont to display the most perfect tact and cleverness.  
Indeed, he seemed delighted to be making other people happy.  Nana 
showed no surprise; she was only somewhat annoyed by the excessive 
heat of Muffat's pursuit.  Life was a serious affair, was it not?  
Love was too silly: it led to nothing.  Besides, she had her 
scruples in view of Zizi's tender age.  Indeed, she had scarcely 
behaved quite fairly toward him.  Dear me, yes, she was choosing the 
proper course again in taking up with an old fellow.

"Zoe," she said to the lady's maid, who was enchanted at the thought 
of leaving the country, "pack the trunks when you get up tomorrow.  
We are going back to Paris."

And she went to bed with Muffat but experienced no pleasure.



CHAPTER VII


One December evening three months afterward Count Muffat was 
strolling in the Passage des Panoramas.  The evening was very mild, 
and owing to a passing shower, the passage had just become crowded 
with people.  There was a perfect mob of them, and they thronged 
slowly and laboriously along between the shops on either side.  
Under the windows, white with reflected light, the pavement was 
violently illuminated.  A perfect stream of brilliancy emanated from 
white globes, red lanterns, blue transparencies, lines of gas jets, 
gigantic watches and fans, outlined in flame and burning in the 
open.  And the motley displays in the shops, the gold ornaments of 
the jeweler's, the glass ornaments of the confectioner's, the light-
colored silks of the modiste's, seemed to shine again in the crude 
light of the reflectors behind the clear plate-glass windows, while 
among the bright-colored, disorderly array of shop signs a huge 
purple glove loomed in the distance like a bleeding hand which had 
been severed from an arm and fastened to a yellow cuff.

Count Muffat had slowly returned as far as the boulevard.  He 
glanced out at the roadway and then came sauntering back along the 
shopwindows.  The damp and heated atmosphere filled the narrow 
passage with a slight luminous mist.  Along the flagstones, which 
had been wet by the drip-drop of umbrellas, the footsteps of the 
crowd rang continually, but there was no sound of voices.  Passers-
by elbowed him at every turn and cast inquiring looks at his silent 
face, which the gaslight rendered pale.  And to escape these curious 
manifestations the count posted himself in front of a stationer's, 
where with profound attention contemplated an array of paperweights 
in the form of glass bowls containing floating landscapes and 
flowers.

He was conscious of nothing: he was thinking of Nana.  Why had she 
lied to him again?  That morning she had written and told him not to 
trouble about her in the evening, her excuse being that Louiset was 
ill and that she was going to pass the night at her aunt's in order 
to nurse him.  But he had felt suspicious and had called at her 
house, where he learned from the porter that Madame had just gone 
off to her theater.  He was astonished at this, for she was not 
playing in the new piece.  Why then should she have told him this 
falsehood, and what could she be doing at the Varietes that evening?  
Hustled by a passer-by, the count unconsciously left the 
paperweights and found himself in front of a glass case full of 
toys, where he grew absorbed over an array of pocketbooks and cigar 
cases, all of which had the same blue swallow stamped on one corner.  
Nana was most certainly not the same woman!  In the early days after 
his return from the country she used to drive him wild with delight, 
as with pussycat caresses she kissed him all round his face and 
whiskers and vowed that he was her own dear pet and the only little 
man she adored.  He was no longer afraid of Georges, whom his mother 
kept down at Les Fondettes.  There was only fat Steiner to reckon 
with, and he believed he was really ousting him, but he did not dare 
provoke an explanation on his score.  He knew he was once more in an 
extraordinary financial scrape and on the verge of being declared 
bankrupt on 'change, so much so that he was clinging fiercely to the 
shareholders in the Landes Salt Pits and striving to sweat a final 
subscription out of them.  Whenever he met him at Nana's she would 
explain reasonably enough that she did not wish to turn him out of 
doors like a dog after all he had spent on her.  Besides, for the 
last three months he had been living in such a whirl of sensual 
excitement that, beyond the need of possessing her, he had felt no 
very distinct impressions.  His was a tardy awakening of the fleshly 
instinct, a childish greed of enjoyment, which left no room for 
either vanity or jealousy.  Only one definite feeling could affect 
him now, and that was Nana's decreasing kindness.  She no longer 
kissed him on the beard!  It made him anxious, and as became a man 
quite ignorant of womankind, he began asking himself what possible 
cause of offense he could have given her.  Besides, he was under the 
impression that he was satisfying all her desires.  And so he harked 
back again and again to the letter he had received that morning with 
its tissue of falsehoods, invented for the extremely simple purpose 
of passing an evening at her own theater.  The crowd had pushed him 
forward again, and he had crossed the passage and was puzzling his 
brain in front of the entrance to a restaurant, his eyes fixed on 
some plucked larks and on a huge salmon laid out inside the window.

At length he seemed to tear himself away from this spectacle.  He 
shook himself, looked up and noticed that it was close on nine 
o'clock.  Nana would soon be coming out, and he would make her tell 
the truth.  And with that he walked on and recalled to memory the 
evenings he once passed in that region in the days when he used to 
meet her at the door of the theater.

He knew all the shops, and in the gas-laden air he recognized their 
different scents, such, for instance, as the strong savor of Russia 
leather, the perfume of vanilla emanating from a chocolate dealer's 
basement, the savor of musk blown in whiffs from the open doors of 
the perfumers.  But he did not dare linger under the gaze of the 
pale shopwomen, who looked placidly at him as though they knew him 
by sight.  For one instant he seemed to be studying the line of 
little round windows above the shops, as though he had never noticed 
them before among the medley of signs.  Then once again he went up 
to the boulevard and stood still a minute or two.  A fine rain was 
now falling, and the cold feel of it on his hands calmed him.  He 
thought of his wife who was staying in a country house near Macon, 
where her friend Mme de Chezelles had been ailing a good deal since 
the autumn.  The carriages in the roadway were rolling through a 
stream of mud.  The country, he thought, must be detestable in such 
vile weather.  But suddenly he became anxious and re-entered the 
hot, close passage down which he strode among the strolling people.  
A thought struck him: if Nana were suspicious of his presence there 
she would be off along the Galerie Montmartre.

After that the count kept a sharp lookout at the very door of the 
theater, though he did not like this passage end, where he was 
afraid of being recognized.  It was at the corner between the 
Galerie des Varietes and the Galerie Saint-Marc, an equivocal corner 
full of obscure little shops.  Of these last one was a shoemaker's, 
where customers never seemed to enter.  Then there were two or three 
upholsterers', deep in dust, and a smoky, sleepy reading room and 
library, the shaded lamps in which cast a green and slumberous light 
all the evening through.  There was never anyone in this corner save 
well-dressed, patient gentlemen, who prowled about the wreckage 
peculiar to a stage door, where drunken sceneshifters and ragged 
chorus girls congregate.  In front of the theater a single gas jet 
in a ground-glass globe lit up the doorway.  For a moment or two 
Muffat thought of questioning Mme Bron; then he grew afraid lest 
Nana should get wind of his presence and escape by way of the 
boulevard.  So he went on the march again and determined to wait 
till he was turned out at the closing of the gates, an event which 
had happened on two previous occasions.  The thought of returning 
home to his solitary bed simply wrung his heart with anguish.  Every 
time that golden-haired girls and men in dirty linen came out and 
stared at him he returned to his post in front of the reading room, 
where, looking in between two advertisements posted on a windowpane, 
he was always greeted by the same sight.  It was a little old man, 
sitting stiff and solitary at the vast table and holding a green 
newspaper in his green hands under the green light of one of the 
lamps.  But shortly before ten o'clock another gentleman, a tall, 
good-looking, fair man with well-fitting gloves, was also walking up 
and down in front of the stage door.  Thereupon at each successive 
turn the pair treated each other to a suspicious sidelong glance.  
The count walked to the corner of the two galleries, which was 
adorned with a high mirror, and when he saw himself therein, looking 
grave and elegant, he was both ashamed and nervous.

Ten o'clock struck, and suddenly it occurred to Muffat that it would 
be very easy to find out whether Nana were in her dressing room or 
not.  He went up the three steps, crossed the little yellow-painted 
lobby and slipped into the court by a door which simply shut with a 
latch.  At that hour of the night the narrow, damp well of a court, 
with its pestiferous water closets, its fountain, its back view ot 
the kitchen stove and the collection of plants with which the 
portress used to litter the place, was drenched in dark mist; but 
the two walls, rising pierced with windows on either hand, were 
flaming with light, since the property room and the firemen's office 
were situated on the ground floor, with the managerial bureau on the 
left, and on the right and upstairs the dressing rooms of the 
company.  The mouths of furnaces seemed to be opening on the outer 
darkness from top to bottom of this well.  The count had at once 
marked the light in the windows of the dressing room on the first 
floor, and as a man who is comforted and happy, he forgot where he 
was and stood gazing upward amid the foul mud and faint decaying 
smell peculiar to the premises of this antiquated Parisian building.  
Big drops were dripping from a broken waterspout, and a ray of 
gaslight slipped from Mme Bron's window and cast a yellow glare over 
a patch of moss-clad pavement, over the base of a wall which had 
been rotted by water from a sink, over a whole cornerful of nameless 
filth amid which old pails and broken crocks lay in fine confusion 
round a spindling tree growing mildewed in its pot.  A window 
fastening creaked, and the count fled.

Nana was certainly going to come down.  He returned to his post in 
front of the reading room; among its slumbering shadows, which 
seemed only broken by the glimmer of a night light, the little old 
man still sat motionless, his side face sharply outlined against his 
newspaper.  Then Muffat walked again and this time took a more 
prolonged turn and, crossing the large gallery, followed the Galerie 
des Varietes as far as that of Feydeau.  The last mentioned was cold 
and deserted and buried in melancholy shadow.  He returned from it, 
passed by the theater, turned the corner of the Galerie Saint-Marc 
and ventured as far as the Galerie Montmartre, where a sugar-
chopping machine in front of a grocer's interested him awhile.  But 
when he was taking his third turn he was seized with such dread lest 
Nana should escape behind his back that he lost all self-respect.  
Thereupon he stationed himself beside the fair gentleman in front of 
the very theater.  Both exchanged a glance of fraternal humility 
with which was mingled a touch of distrust, for it was possible they 
might yet turn out to be rivals.  Some sceneshifters who came out 
smoking their pipes between the acts brushed rudely against them, 
but neither one nor the other ventured to complain.  Three big 
wenches with untidy hair and dirty gowns appeared on the doorstep.  
They were munching apples and spitting out the cores, but the two 
men bowed their heads and patiently braved their impudent looks and 
rough speeches, though they were hustled and, as it were, soiled by 
these trollops, who amused themselves by pushing each other down 
upon them.

At that very moment Nana descended the three steps.  She grew very 
pale when she noticed Muffat.

"Oh, it's you!" she stammered.

The sniggering extra ladies were quite frightened when they 
recognized her, and they formed in line and stood up, looking as 
stiff and serious as servants whom their mistress has caught 
behaving badly.  The tall fair gentleman had moved away; he was at 
once reassured and sad at heart.

"Well, give me your arm," Nana continued impatiently.

They walked quietly off.  The count had been getting ready to 
question her and now found nothing to say.

It was she who in rapid tones told a story to the effect that she 
had been at her aunt's as late as eight o'clock, when, seeing 
Louiset very much better, she had conceived the idea of going down 
to the theater for a few minutes.

"On some important business?" he queried.

'Yes, a new piece," she replied after some slight hesitation.  "They 
wanted my advice."

He knew that she was not speaking the truth, but the warm touch of 
her arm as it leaned firmly on his own, left him powerless.  He felt 
neither anger nor rancor after his long, long wait; his one thought 
was to keep her where she was now that he had got hold of her.  
Tomorrow, and not before, he would try and find out what she had 
come to her dressing room after.  But Nana still appeared to 
hesitate; she was manifestly a prey to the sort of secret anguish 
that besets people when they are trying to regain lost ground and to 
initiate a plan of action.  Accordingly, as they turned the corner 
of the Galerie des Varietes, she stopped in front of the show in a 
fan seller's window.

"I say, that's pretty," she whispered; "I mean that mother-of-pearl 
mount with the feathers."

Then, indifferently:

"So you're seeing me home?"

"Of course," he said, with some surprise, "since your child's 
better."

She was sorry she had told him that story.  Perhaps Louiset was 
passing through another crisis!  She talked of returning to the 
Batignolles.  But when he offered to accompany her she did not 
insist on going.  For a second or two she was possessed with the 
kind of white-hot fury which a woman experiences when she feels 
herself entrapped and must, nevertheless, behave prettily.  But in 
the end she grew resigned and determined to gain time.  If only she 
could get rid of the count toward midnight everything would happen 
as she wished.

"Yes, it's true; you're a bachelor tonight," she murmured.  "Your 
wife doesn't return till tomorrow, eh?"

"Yes," replied Muffat.  It embarrassed him somewhat to hear her 
talking familiarly about the countess.

But she pressed him further, asking at what time the train was due 
and wanting to know whether he were going to the station to meet 
her.  She had begun to walk more slowly than ever, as though the 
shops interested her very much.

"Now do look!" she said, pausing anew before a jeweler's window, 
"what a funny bracelet!"

She adored the Passage des Panoramas.  The tinsel of the ARTICLE DE 
PARIS, the false jewelry, the gilded zinc, the cardboard made to 
look like leather, had been the passion of her early youth.  It 
remained, and when she passed the shop-windows she could not tear 
herself away from them.  It was the same with her today as when she 
was a ragged, slouching child who fell into reveries in front of the 
chocolate maker's sweet-stuff shows or stood listening to a musical 
box in a neighboring shop or fell into supreme ecstasies over cheap, 
vulgarly designed knickknacks, such as nutshell workboxes, 
ragpickers' baskets for holding toothpicks, Vendome columns and 
Luxor obelisks on which thermometers were mounted.  But that evening 
she was too much agitated and looked at things without seeing them.  
When all was said and done, it bored her to think she was not free.  
An obscure revolt raged within her, and amid it all she felt a wild 
desire to do something foolish.  It was a great thing gained, 
forsooth, to be mistress of men of position!  She had been devouring 
the prince's substance and Steiner's, too, with her childish 
caprices, and yet she had no notion where her money went.  Even at 
this time of day her flat in the Boulevard Haussmann was not 
entirely furnished.  The drawing room alone was finished, and with 
its red satin upholsteries and excess of ornamentation and furnirure 
it struck a decidedly false note.  Her creditors, moreover, would 
now take to tormenting her more than ever before whenever she had no 
money on hand, a fact which caused her constant surprise, seeing 
that she was wont to quote her self as a model of economy.  For a 
month past that thief Steiner had been scarcely able to pay up his 
thousand francs on the occasions when she threatened to kick him out 
of doors in case he failed to bring them.  As to Muffat, he was an 
idiot: he had no notion as to what it was usual to give, and she 
could not, therefore, grow angry with him on the score of 
miserliness.  Oh, how gladly she would have turned all these folks 
off had she not repeated to herself a score of times daily a whole 
string of economical maxims!

One ought to be sensible, Zoe kept saying every morning, and Nana 
herself was constantly haunted by the queenly vision seen at 
Chamont.  It had now become an almost religious memory with her, and 
through dint of being ceaselessly recalled it grew even more 
grandiose.  And for these reasons, though trembling with repressed 
indignation, she now hung submissively on the count's arm as they 
went from window to window among the fast-diminishing crowd.  The 
pavement was drying outside, and a cool wind blew along the gallery, 
swept the close hot air up beneath the glass that imprisoned it and 
shook the colored lanterns and the lines of gas jets and the giant 
fan which was flaring away like a set piece in an illumination.  At 
the door of the restaurant a waiter was putting out the gas, while 
the motionless attendants in the empty, glaring shops looked as 
though they had dropped off to sleep with their eyes open.

"Oh, what a duck!" continued Nana, retracing her steps as far as the 
last of the shops in order to go into ecstasies over a porcelain 
greyhound standing with raised forepaw in front of a nest hidden 
among roses.

At length they quitted the passage, but she refused the offer of a 
cab.  It was very pleasant out she said; besides, they were in no 
hurry, and it would be charming to return home on foot.  When they 
were in front of the Cafe Anglais she had a sudden longing to eat 
oysters.  Indeed, she said that owing to Louiset's illness she had 
tasted nothing since morning.  Muffat dared not oppose her.  Yet as 
he did not in those days wish to be seen about with her he asked for 
a private supper room and hurried to it along the corridors.  She 
followed him with the air of a woman familiar with the house, and 
they were on the point of entering a private room, the door of which 
a waiter held open, when from a neighboring saloon, whence issued a 
perfect tempest of shouts and laughter, a man rapidiy emerged.  It 
was Daguenet.

"By Jove, it's Nana!" he cried.

The count had briskly disappeared into the private room, leaving the 
door ajar behind him.  But Daguenet winked behind his round 
shoulders and added in chaffing tones:

"The deuce, but you're doing nicely!  You catch 'em in the Tuileries 
nowadays!"

Nana smiled and laid a finger on her lips to beg him to be silent.  
She could see he was very much exalted, and yet she was glad to have 
met him, for she still felt tenderly toward him, and that despite 
the nasty way he had cut her when in the company of fashionable 
ladies.

"What are you doing now?" she asked amicably.

"Becoming respectable.  Yes indeed, I'm thinking of getting 
married."

She shrugged her shoulders with a pitying air.  But he jokingly 
continued to the effect that to be only just gaining enough on 
'change to buy ladies bouquets could scarcely be called an income, 
provided you wanted to look respectable too!  His three hundred 
thousand francs had only lasted him eighteen months!  He wanted to 
be practical, and he was going to marry a girl with a huge dowry and 
end off as a PREFET, like his father before him!  Nana still smiled 
incredulously.  She nodded in the direction of the saloon: "Who are 
you with in there?"

"Oh, a whole gang," he said, forgetting all about his projects under 
the influence of returning intoxication.  "Just think!  Lea is 
telling us about her trip in Egypt.  Oh, it's screaming!  There's a 
bathing story--"

And he told the story while Nana lingered complaisantly.  They had 
ended by leaning up against the wall in the corridor, facing one 
another.  Gas jets were flaring under the low ceiling, and a vague 
smell of cookery hung about the folds of the hangings.  Now and 
again, in order to hear each other's voices when the din in the 
saloon became louder than ever, they had to lean well forward.  
Every few seconds, however, a waiter with an armful of dishes found 
his passage barred and disturbed them.  But they did not cease their 
talk for that; on the contrary, they stood close up to the walls 
and, amid the uproar of the supper party and the jostlings of the 
waiters, chatted as quietly as if they were by their own firesides.

"Just look at that," whispered the young man, pointing to the door 
of the private room through which Muffat had vanished.

Both looked.  The door was quivering slightly; a breath of air 
seemed to be disturbing it, and at last, very, very slowly and 
without the least sound, it was shut to.  They exchanged a silent 
chuckle.  The count must be looking charmingly happy all alone in 
there!

"By the by," she asked, "have you read Fauchery's article about me?"

"Yes, 'The Golden Fly,'" replied Daguenet; "I didn't mention it to 
you as I was afraid of paining you."

"Paining me--why?  His article's a very long one."

She was flattered to think that the Figaro should concern itself 
about her person.  But failing the explanations of her hairdresser 
Francis, who had brought her the paper, she would not have 
understood that it was she who was in question.  Daguenet 
scrutinized her slyly, sneering in his chaffing way.  Well, well, 
since she was pleased, everybody else ought to be.

"By your leave!" shouted a waiter, holding a dish of iced cheese in 
both hands as he separated them.

Nana had stepped toward the little saloon where Muffat was waiting.

"Well, good-by!" continued Daguenet.  "Go and find your cuckold 
again."

But she halted afresh.

"Why d'you call him cuckold?"

"Because he is a cuckold, by Jove!"

She came and leaned against the wall again; she was profoundly 
interested.

"Ah!" she said simply.

"What, d'you mean to say you didn't know that?  Why, my dear girl, 
his wife's Fauchery's mistress.  It probably began in the country.  
Some time ago, when I was coming here, Fauchery left me, and I 
suspect he's got an assignation with her at his place tonight.  
They've made up a story about a journey, I fancy."

Overcome with surprise, Nana remained voiceless.

"I suspected it," she said at last, slapping her leg.  "I guessed it 
by merely looking at her on the highroad that day.  To think of its 
being possible for an honest woman to deceive her husband, and with 
that blackguard Fauchery too!  He'll teach her some pretty things!"

"Oh, it isn't her trial trip," muttered Daguenet wickedly.  "Perhaps 
she knows as much about it as he does."

At this Nana gave vent to an indignant exclamation.

"Indeed she does!  What a nice world!  It's too foul!"

"By your leave!" shouted a waiter, laden with bottles, as he 
separated them.

Daguenet drew her forward again and held her hand for a second or 
two.  He adopted his crystalline tone of voice, the voice with notes 
as sweet as those of a harmonica, which had gained him his success 
among the ladies of Nana's type.

"Good-by, darling!  You know I love you always."

She disengaged her hand from his, and while a thunder of shouts and 
bravos, which made the door in the saloon tremble again, almost 
drowned her words she smilingly remarked:

"It's over between us, stupid!  But that doesn't matter.  Do come up 
one of these days, and we'll have a chat."

Then she became serious again and in the outraged tones of a 
respectable woman:

"So he's a cuckold, is he?" she cried.  "Well, that IS a nuisance, 
dear boy.  They've always sickened me, cuckolds have."

When at length she went into the private room she noticed that 
Muffat was sitting resignedly on a narrow divan with pale face and 
twitching hands.  He did not reproach her at all, and she, greatly 
moved, was divided between feelings of pity and of contempt.  The 
poor man!  To think of his being so unworthily cheated by a vile 
wife!  She had a good mind to throw her arms round his neck and 
comfort him.  But it was only fair all the same!  He was a fool with 
women, and this would teach him a lesson!  Nevertheless, pity 
overcame her.  She did not get rid of him as she had determined to 
do after the oysters had been discussed.  They scarcely stayed a 
quarter of an hour in the Cafe Anglais, and together they went into 
the house in the Boulevard Haussmann.  It was then eleven.  Before 
midnight she would have easily have discovered some means of getting 
rid of him kindly.

In the anteroom, however, she took the precaution of giving Zoe an 
order.  "You'll look out for him, and you'll tell him not to make a 
noise if the other man's still with me."

"But where shall I put him, madame?"

"Keep him in the kitchen.  It's more safe."

In the room inside Muffat was already taking off his overcoat.  A 
big fire was burning on the hearth.  It was the same room as of old, 
with its rosewood furniture and its hangings and chair coverings of 
figured damask with the large blue flowers on a gray background.  On 
two occasions Nana had thought of having it redone, the first in 
black velvet, the second in white satin with bows, but directly 
Steiner consented she demanded the money that these changes would 
cost simply with a view to pillaging him.  She had, indeed, only 
indulged in a tiger skin rug for the hearth and a cut-glass hanging 
lamp.

"I'm not sleepy; I'm not going to bed," she said the moment they 
were shut in together.

The count obeyed her submissively, as became a man no longer afraid 
of being seen.  His one care now was to avoid vexing her.

"As you will," he murmured.

Nevertheless, he took his boots off, too, before seating himself in 
front of the fire.  One of Nana's pleasures consisted in undressing 
herself in front of the mirror on her wardrobe door, which reflected 
her whole height.  She would let everything slip off her in turn and 
then would stand perfectly naked and gaze and gaze in complete 
oblivion of all around her.  Passion for her own body, ecstasy over 
her satin skin and the supple contours of her shape, would keep her 
serious, attentive and absorbed in the love of herself.  The 
hairdresser frequently found her standing thus and would enter 
without her once turning to look at him.  Muffat used to grow angry 
then, but he only succeeded in astonishing her.  What was coming 
over the man?  She was doing it to please herself, not other people.

That particular evening she wanted to have a better view of herself, 
and she lit the six candles attached to the frame of the mirror.  
But while letting her shift slip down she paused.  She had been 
preoccupied for some moments past, and a question was on her lips.

"You haven't read the Figaro article, have you?  The paper's on the 
table."  Daguenet's laugh had recurred to her recollections, and she 
was harassed by a doubt.  If that Fauchery had slandered her she 
would be revenged.

"They say that it's about me," she continued, affecting 
indifference.  "What's your notion, eh, darling?"

And letting go her shift and waiting till Muffat should have done 
reading, she stood naked.  Muffat was reading slowly Fauchery's 
article entitled "The Golden Fly," describing the life of a harlot 
descended from four or five generations of drunkards and tainted in 
her blood by a cumulative inheritance of misery and drink, which in 
her case has taken the form of a nervous exaggeration of the sexual 
instinct.  She has shot up to womanhood in the slums and on the 
pavements of Paris, and tall, handsome and as superbly grown as a 
dunghill plant, she avenges the beggars and outcasts of whom she is 
the ultimate product.  With her the rottenness that is allowed to 
ferment among the populace is carried upward and rots the 
aristocracy.  She becomes a blind power of nature, a leaven of 
destruction, and unwittingly she corrupts and disorganizes all 
Paris, churning it between her snow-white thighs as milk is monthly 
churned by housewives.  And it was at the end of this article that 
the comparison with a fly occurred, a fly of sunny hue which has 
flown up out of the dung, a fly which sucks in death on the carrion 
tolerated by the roadside and then buzzing, dancing and glittering 
like a precious stone enters the windows of palaces and poisons the 
men within by merely settling on them in her flight.

Muffat lifted his head; his eyes stared fixedly; he gazed at the 
fire.

"Well?" asked Nana.

But he did not answer.  It seemed as though he wanted to read the 
article again.  A cold, shivering feeling was creeping from his 
scalp to his shoulders.  This article had been written anyhow.  The 
phrases were wildly extravagant; the unexpected epigrams and quaint 
collocations of words went beyond all bounds.  Yet notwithstanding 
this, he was struck by what he had read, for it had rudely awakened 
within him much that for months past he had not cared to think 
about.

He looked up.  Nana had grown absorbed in her ecstatic self-
contemplation.  She was bending her neck and was looking attentively 
in the mirror at a little brown mark above her right haunch.  She 
was touching it with the tip of her finger and by dint of bending 
backward was making it stand out more clearly than ever.  Situated 
where it was, it doubtless struck her as both quaint and pretty.  
After that she studied other parts of her body with an amused 
expression and much of the vicious curiosity of a child.  The sight 
of herself always astonished her, and she would look as surprised 
and ecstatic as a young girl who has discovered her puberty.  
Slowly, slowly, she spread out her arms in order to give full value 
to her figure, which suggested the torso of a plump Venus.  She bent 
herself this way and that and examined herself before and behind, 
stooping to look at the side view of her bosom and at the sweeping 
contours of her thighs.  And she ended with a strange amusement 
which consisted of swinging to right and left, her knees apart and 
her body swaying from the waist with the perpetual jogging, 
twitching movements peculiar to an oriental dancer in the danse du 
ventre.

Muffat sat looking at her.  She frightened him.  The newspaper had 
dropped from his hand.  For a moment he saw her as she was, and he 
despised himself.  Yes, it was just that; she had corrupted his 
life; he already felt himself tainted to his very marrow by 
impurities hitherto undreamed of.  Everything was now destined to 
rot within him, and in the twinkling of an eye he understood what 
this evil entailed.  He saw the ruin brought about by this kind of 
"leaven"--himself poisoned, his family destroyed, a bit of the 
social fabric cracking and crumbling.  And unable to take his eyes 
from the sight, he sat looking fixedly at her, striving to inspire 
himself with loathing for her nakedness.

Nana no longer moved.  With an arm behind her neck, one hand clasped 
in the other, and her elbows far apart, she was throwing back her 
head so that he could see a foreshortened reflection of her half-
closed eyes, her parted lips, her face clothed with amorous 
laughter.  Her masses of yellow hair were unknotted behind, and they 
covered her back with the fell of a lioness.

Bending back thus, she displayed her solid Amazonian waist and firm 
bosom, where strong muscles moved under the satin texture of the 
skin.  A delicate line, to which the shoulder and the thigh added 
their slight undulations, ran from one of her elbows to her foot, 
and Muffat's eyes followed this tender profile and marked how the 
outlines of the fair flesh vanished in golden gleams and how its 
rounded contours shone like silk in the candlelight.  He thought of 
his old dread of Woman, of the Beast of the Scriptures, at once lewd 
and wild.  Nana was all covered with fine hair; a russet made her 
body velvety, while the Beast was apparent in the almost equine 
development of her flanks, in the fleshy exuberances and deep 
hollows of her body, which lent her sex the mystery and 
suggestiveness lurking in their shadows.  She was, indeed, that 
Golden Creature, blind as brute force, whose very odor ruined the 
world.  Muffat gazed and gazed as a man possessed, till at last, 
when he had shut his eyes in order to escape it, the Brute 
reappeared in the darkness of the brain, larger, more terrible, more 
suggestive in its attitude.  Now, he understood, it would remain 
before his eyes, in his very flesh, forever.

But Nana was gathering herself together.  A little thrill of 
tenderness seemed to have traversed her members.  Her eyes were 
moist; she tried, as it were, to make herself small, as though she 
could feel herself better thus.  Then she threw her head and bosom 
back and, melting, as it were, in one great bodily caress, she 
rubbed her cheeks coaxingly, first against one shoulder, then 
against the other.  Her lustful mouth breathed desire over her 
limbs.  She put out her lips, kissed herself long in the 
neighborhood of her armpit and laughed at the other Nana who also 
was kissing herself in the mirror.

Then Muffat gave a long sigh.  This solitary pleasure exasperated 
him.  Suddenly all his resolutions were swept away as though by a 
mighty wind.  In a fit of brutal passion he caught Nana to his 
breast and threw her down on the carpet.

"Leave me alone!" she cried.  "You're hurting me!"

He was conscious of his undoing; he recognized in her stupidity, 
vileness and falsehood, and he longed to possess her, poisoned 
though she was.

"Oh, you're a fool!" she said savagely when he let her get up.

Nevertheless, she grew calm.  He would go now.  She slipped on a 
nightgown trimmed with lace and came and sat down on the floor in 
front of the fire.  It was her favorite position.  When she again 
questioned him about Fauchery's article Muffat replied vaguely, for 
he wanted to avoid a scene.  Besides, she declared that she had 
found a weak spot in Fauchery.  And with that she relapsed into a 
long silence and reflected on how to dismiss the count.  She would 
have liked to do it in an agreeable way, for she was still a good-
natured wench, and it bored her to cause others pain, especially in 
the present instance where the man was a cuckold.  The mere thought 
of his being that had ended by rousing her sympathies!

"So you expect your wife tomorrow morning?" she said at last.

Muffat had stretched himself in an armchair.  He looked drowsy, and 
his limbs were tired.  He gave a sign of assent.  Nana sat gazing 
seriously at him with a dull tumult in her brain.  Propped on one 
leg, among her slightly rumpled laces she was holding one of her 
bare feet between her hands and was turning it mechanically about 
and about.

"Have you been married long?" she asked.

"Nineteen years," replied the count

"Ah!  And is your wife amiable?  Do you get on comfortably 
together?"

He was silent.  Then with some embarrassment:

"You know I've begged you never to talk of those matters."

"Dear me, why's that?" she cried, beginning to grow vexed directly.  
"I'm sure I won't eat your wife if I DO talk about her.  Dear boy, 
why, every woman's worth--"

But she stopped for fear of saying too much.  She contented herself 
by assuming a superior expression, since she considered herself 
extremely kind.  The poor fellow, he needed delicate handling!  
Besides, she had been struck by a laughable notion, and she smiled 
as she looked him carefully over.

"I say," she continued, "I haven't told you the story about you that 
Fauchery's circulating.  There's a viper, if you like!  I don't bear 
him any ill will, because his article may be all right, but he's a 
regular viper all the same."

And laughing more gaily than ever, she let go her foot and, crawling 
along the floor, came and propped herself against the count's knees.

"Now just fancy, he swears you were still like a babe when you 
married your wife.  You were still like that, eh?  Is it true, eh?"

Her eyes pressed for an answer, and she raised her hands to his 
shoulders and began shaking him in order to extract the desired 
confession.

"Without doubt," he at last made answer gravely.

Thereupon she again sank down at his feet.  She was shaking with 
uproarious laughter, and she stuttered and dealt him little slaps.

"No, it's too funny!  There's no one like you; you're a marvel.  
But, my poor pet, you must just have been stupid!  When a man 
doesn't know--oh, it is so comical!  Good heavens, I should have 
liked to have seen you!  And it came off well, did it?  Now tell me 
something about it!  Oh, do, do tell me!"

She overwhelmed him with questions, forgetting nothing and requiring 
the veriest details.  And she laughed such sudden merry peals which 
doubled her up with mirth, and her chemise slipped and got turned 
down to such an extent, and her skin looked so golden in the light 
of the big fire, that little by little the count described to her 
his bridal night.  He no longer felt at all awkward.  He himself 
began to be amused at last as he spoke.  Only he kept choosing his 
phrases, for he still had a certain sense of modesty.  The young 
woman, now thoroughly interested, asked him about the countess.  
According to his account, she had a marvelous figure but was a 
regular iceberg for all that.

"Oh, get along with you!" he muttered indolently.  "You have no 
cause to be jealous."

Nana had ceased laughing, and she now resumed her former position 
and, with her back to the fire, brought her knees up under her chin 
with her clasped hands.  Then in a serious tone she declared:

"It doesn't pay, dear boy, to look like a ninny with one's wife the 
first night."

"Why?" queried the astonished count.

"Because," she replied slowly, assuming a doctorial expression.

And with that she looked as if she were delivering a lecture and 
shook her head at him.  In the end, however, she condescended to 
explain herself more lucidly.

"Well, look here!  I know how it all happens.  Yes, dearie, women 
don't like a man to be foolish.  They don't say anything because 
there's such a thing as modesty, you know, but you may be sure they 
think about it for a jolly long time to come.  And sooner or later, 
when a man's been an ignoramus, they go and make other arrangements.  
That's it, my pet."

He did not seem to understand.  Whereupon she grew more definite 
still.  She became maternal and taught him his lesson out of sheer 
goodness of heart, as a friend might do.  Since she had discovered 
him to be a cuckold the information had weighed on her spirits; she 
was madly anxious to discuss his position with him.

"Good heavens!  I'm talking of things that don't concern me.  I've 
said what I have because everybody ought to be happy.  We're having 
a chat, eh?  Well then, you're to answer me as straight as you can."

But she stopped to change her position, for she was burning herself.  
"It's jolly hot, eh?  My back's roasted.  Wait a second.  I'll cook 
my tummy a bit.  That's what's good for the aches!"

And when she had turned round with her breast to the fire and her 
feet tucked under her:

"Let me see," she said; "you don't sleep with your wife any longer?"

"No, I swear to you I don't," said Muffat, dreading a scene.

"And you believe she's really a stick?"

He bowed his head in the affirmative.

"And that's why you love me?  Answer me!  I shan't be angry."

He repeated the same movement.

"Very well then," she concluded.  "I suspected as much!  Oh, the 
poor pet.  Do you know my aunt Lerat?  When she comes get her to 
tell you the story about the fruiterer who lives opposite her.  Just 
fancy that man--Damn it, how hot this fire is!  I must turn round.  
I'm going to roast my left side now."  And as she presented her side 
to the blaze a droll idea struck her, and like a good-tempered 
thing, she made fun of herself for she was dellghted to see that she 
was looking so plump and pink in the light of the coal fire.

"I look like a goose, eh?  Yes, that's it!  I'm a goose on the spit, 
and I'm turning, turning and cooking in my own juice, eh?"

And she was once more indulging in a merry fit of laughter when a 
sound of voices and slamming doors became audible.  Muffat was 
surprised, and he questioned her with a look.  She grew serious, and 
an anxious expression came over her face.  It must be Zoe's cat, a 
cursed beast that broke everything.  It was half-past twelve 
o'clock.  How long was she going to bother herself in her cuckold's 
behalf?  Now that the other man had come she ought to get him out of 
the way, and that quickly.

"What were you saying?" asked the count complaisantly, for he was 
charmed to see her so kind to him.

But in her desire to be rid of him she suddenly changed her mood, 
became brutal and did not take care what she was saying.

"Oh yes!  The fruiterer and his wife.  Well, my dear fellow, they 
never once touched one another!  Not the least bit!  She was very 
keen on it, you understand, but he, the ninny, didn't know it.  He 
was so green that he thought her a stick, and so he went elsewhere 
and took up with streetwalkers, who treated him to all sorts of 
nastiness, while she, on her part, made up for it beautifully with 
fellows who were a lot slyer than her greenhorn of a husband.  And 
things always turn out that way through people not understanding one 
another.  I know it, I do!"

Muffat was growing pale.  At last he was beginning to understand her 
allusions, and he wanted to make her keep silence.  But she was in 
full swing.

"No, hold your tongue, will you?  If you weren't brutes you would be 
as nice with your wives as you are with us, and if your wives 
weren't geese they would take as much pains to keep you as we do to 
get you.  That's the way to behave.  Yes, my duck, you can put that 
in your pipe and smoke it."

"Do not talk of honest women," he said in a hard voice.  "You do not 
know them."

At that Nana rose to her knees.

"I don't know them!  Why, they aren't even clean, your honest women 
aren't!  They aren't even clean!  I defy you to find me one who 
would dare show herself as I am doing.  Oh, you make me laugh with 
your honest women.  Don't drive me to it; don't oblige me to tell 
you things I may regret afterward."

The count, by way of answer, mumbled something insulting.  Nana 
became quite pale in her turn.  For some seconds she looked at him 
without speaking.  Then in her decisive way:

"What would you do if your wife were deceiving you?"

He made a threatening gesture.

"Well, and if I were to?"

"Oh, you," he muttered with a shrug of his shoulders.

Nana was certainly not spiteful.  Since the beginning of the 
conversation she had been strongly tempted to throw his cuckold's 
reputation in his teeth, but she had resisted.  She would have liked 
to confess him quietly on the subject, but he had begun to 
exasperate her at last.  The matter ought to stop now.

"Well, then, my dearie," she continued, "I don't know what you're 
getting at with me.  For two hours past you've been worrying my life 
out.  Now do just go and find your wife, for she's at it with 
Fauchery.  Yes, it's quite correct; they're in the Rue Taitbout, at 
the corner of the Rue de Provence.  You see, I'm giving you the 
address."

Then triumphantly, as she saw Muffat stagger to his feet like an ox 
under the hammer:

"If honest women must meddle in our affairs and take our sweethearts 
from us--Oh, you bet they're a nice lot, those honest women!"

But she was unable to proceed.  With a terrible push he had cast her 
full length on the floor and, lifting his heel, he seemed on the 
point of crushing in her head in order to silence her.  For the 
twinkling of an eye she felt sickening dread.  Blinded with rage, he 
had begun beating about the room like a maniac.  Then his choking 
silence and the struggle with which he was shaken melted her to 
tears.  She felt a mortal regret and, rolling herself up in front of 
the fire so as to roast her right side, she undertook the task of 
comforting him.

"I take my oath, darling, I thought you knew it all.  Otherwise I 
shouldn't have spoken; you may be sure.  But perhaps it isn't true.  
I don't say anything for certain.  I've been told it, and people are 
talking about it, but what does that prove?  Oh, get along!  You're 
very silly to grow riled about it.  If I were a man I shouldn't care 
a rush for the women!  All the women are alike, you see, high or 
low; they're all rowdy and the rest of it."

In a fit of self-abnegation she was severe on womankind, for she 
wished thus to lessen the cruelty of her blow.  But he did not 
listen to her or hear what she said.  With fumbling movements he had 
put on his boots and his overcoat.  For a moment longer he raved 
round, and then in a final outburst, finding himself near the door, 
he rushed from the room.  Nana was very much annoyed.

"Well, well!  A prosperous trip to you!" she continued aloud, though 
she was now alone.  "He's polite, too, that fellow is, when he's 
spoken to!  And I had to defend myself at that!  Well, I was the 
first to get back my temper and I made plenty of excuses, I'm 
thinking!  Besides, he had been getting on my nerves!"

Nevertheless, she was not happy and sat scratching her legs with 
both hands.  Then she took high ground:

"Tut, tut, it isn't my fault if he is a cuckold!"

And toasted on every side and as hot as a roast bird, she went and 
buried herself under the bedclothes after ringing for Zoe to usher 
in the other man, who was waiting in the kitchen.

Once outside, Muffat began walking at a furious pace.  A fresh 
shower had just fallen, and he kept slipping on the greasy pavement.  
When he looked mechanically up into the sky he saw ragged, soot-
colored clouds scudding in front of the moon.  At this hour of the 
night passers-by were becoming few and far between in the Boulevard 
Haussmann.  He skirted the enclosures round the opera house in his 
search for darkness, and as he went along he kept mumbling 
inconsequent phrases.  That girl had been lying.  She had invented 
her story out of sheer stupidity and cruelty.  He ought to have 
crushed her head when he had it under his heel.  After all was said 
and done, the business was too shameful.  Never would he see her; 
never would he touch her again, or if he did he would be miserably 
weak.  And with that he breathed hard, as though he were free once 
more.  Oh, that naked, cruel monster, roasting away like any goose 
and slavering over everything that he had respected for forty years 
back.  The moon had come out, and the empty street was bathed in 
white light.  He felt afraid, and he burst into a great fit of 
sobbing, for he had grown suddenly hopeless and maddened as though 
he had sunk into a fathomless void.

"My God!" he stuttered out.  "It's finished!  There's nothing left 
now!"

Along the boulevards belated people were hurrying.  He tried hard to 
be calm, and as the story told him by that courtesan kept recurring 
to his burning consciousness, he wanted to reason the matter out.  
The countess was coming up from Mme de Chezelles's country house 
tomorrow morning.  Yet nothing, in fact, could have prevented her 
from returning to Paris the night before and passing it with that 
man.  He now began recalling to mind certain details of their stay 
at Les Fondettes.  One evening, for instance, he had surprised 
Sabine in the shade of some trees, when she was so much agitated as 
to be unable to answer his questions.  The man had been present; why 
should she not be with him now?  The more he thought about it the 
more possible the whole story became, and he ended by thinking it 
natural and even inevitable.  While he was in his shirt sleeves in 
the house of a harlot his wife was undressing in her lover's room.  
Nothing could be simpler or more logical!  Reasoning in this way, he 
forced himself to keep cool.  He felt as if there were a great 
downward movement in the direction of fleshly madness, a movement 
which, as it grew, was overcoming the whole world round about him.  
Warm images pursued him in imagination.  A naked Nana suddenly 
evoked a naked Sabine.  At this vision, which seemed to bring them 
together in shameless relationship and under the influence of the 
same lusts, he literally stumbled, and in the road a cab nearly ran 
over him.  Some women who had come out of a cafe jostled him amid 
loud laughter.  Then a fit of weeping once more overcame him, 
despite all his efforts to the contrary, and, not wishing to shed 
tears in the presence of others, he plunged into a dark and empty 
street.  It was the Rue Rossini, and along its silent length he wept 
like a child.

"It's over with us," he said in hollow tones.  "There's nothing left 
us now, nothing left us now!"

He wept so violently that he had to lean up against a door as he 
buried his face in his wet hands.  A noise of footsteps drove him 
away.  He felt a shame and a fear which made him fly before people's 
faces with the restless step of a bird of darkness.  When passers-by 
met him on the pavement he did his best to look and walk in a 
leisurely way, for he fancied they were reading his secret in the 
very swing of his shoulders.  He had followed the Rue de la Grange 
Bateliere as far as the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, where the 
brilliant lamplight surprised him, and he retraced his steps.  For 
nearly an hour he traversed the district thus, choosing always the 
darkest corners.  Doubtless there was some goal whither his steps 
were patiently, instinctively, leading him through a labyrinth of 
endless turnings.  At length he lifted his eyes up it a street 
corner.  He had reached his destination, the point where the Rue 
Taitbout and the Rue de la Provence met.  He had taken an hour amid 
his painful mental sufferings to arrive at a place he could have 
reached in five minutes.  One morning a month ago he remembered 
going up to Fauchery's rooms to thank him for a notice of a ball at 
the Tuileries, in which the journalist had mentioned him.  The flat 
was between the ground floor and the first story and had a row of 
small square windows which were half hidden by the colossal 
signboard belonging to a shop.  The last window on the left was 
bisected by a brilliant band of lamplight coming from between the 
half-closed curtains.  And he remained absorbed and expectant, with 
his gaze fixed on this shining streak.

The moon had disappeared in an inky sky, whence an icy drizzle was 
falling.  Two o'clock struck at the Trinite.  The Rue de Provence 
and the Rue Taitbout lay in shadow, bestarred at intervals by bright 
splashes of light from the gas lamps, which in the distance were 
merged in yellow mist.  Muffat did not move from where he was 
standing.  That was the room.  He remembered it now: it had hangings 
of red "andrinople," and a Louis XIII bed stood at one end of it.  
The lamp must be standing on the chimney piece to the right.  
Without doubt they had gone to bed, for no shadows passed across the 
window, and the bright streak gleamed as motionless as the light of 
a night lamp.  With his eyes still uplifted he began forming a plan; 
he would ring the bell, go upstairs despite the porter's 
remonstrances, break the doors in with a push of his shoulder and 
fall upon them in the very bed without giving them time to unlace 
their arms.  For one moment the thought that he had no weapon upon 
him gave him pause, but directly afterward he decided to throttle 
them.  He returned to the consideration of his project, and he 
perfected it while waiting for some sign, some indication, which 
should bring certainty with it.

Had a woman's shadow only shown itself at that moment he would have 
rung.  But the thought that perhaps he was deceiving himself froze 
him.  How could he be certain?  Doubts began to return.  His wife 
could not be with that man.  It was monstrous and impossible.  
Nevertheless, he stayed where he was and was gradually overcome by a 
species of torpor which merged into sheer feebleness while he waited 
long, and the fixity of his gaze induced hallucinations.

A shower was falling.  Two policemen were approaching, and he was 
forced to leave the doorway where he had taken shelter.  When these 
were lost to view in the Rue de Provence he returned to his post, 
wet and shivering.  The luminous streak still traversed the window, 
and this time he was going away for good when a shadow crossed it.  
It moved so quickly that he thought he had deceived himself.  But 
first one and then another black thing followed quickly after it, 
and there was a regular commotion in the room.  Riveted anew to the 
pavement, he experienced an intolerable burning sensation in his 
inside as he waited to find out the meaning of it all.  Outlines of 
arms and legs flitted after one another, and an enormous hand 
traveled about with the silhouette of a water jug.  He distinguished 
nothing clearly, but he thought he recognized a woman's headdress.  
And he disputed the point with himself; it might well have been 
Sabine's hair, only the neck did not seem sufficiently slim.  At 
that hour of the night he had lost the power of recognition and of 
action.  In this terrible agony of uncertainty his inside caused him 
such acute suffering that he pressed against the door in order to 
calm himself, shivering like a man in rags, as he did so.  Then 
seeing that despite everything he could not turn his eyes away from 
the window, his anger changed into a fit of moralizing.  He fancied 
himself a deputy; he was haranguing an assembly, loudly denouncing 
debauchery, prophesying national ruin.  And he reconstructed 
Fauchery's article on the poisoned fly, and he came before the house 
and declared that morals such as these, which could only be 
paralleled in the days of the later Roman Empire, rendered society 
an impossibility; that did him good.  But the shadows had meanwhile 
disappeared.  Doubtless they had gone to bed again, and, still 
watching, he continued waiting where he was.

Three o'clock struck, then four, but he could not take his 
departure.  When showers fell he buried himself in a corner of the 
doorway, his legs splashed with wet.  Nobody passed by now, and 
occasionally his eyes would close, as though scorched by the streak 
of light, which he kept watching obstinately, fixedly, with idiotic 
persistence.  On two subsequent occasions the shadows flitted about, 
repeating the same gestures and agitating the silhouette of the same 
gigantic jug, and twice quiet was re-established, and the night lamp 
again glowed discreetly out.  These shadows only increased his 
uncertainty.  Then, too, a sudden idea soothed his brain while it 
postponed the decisive moment.  After all, he had only to wait for 
the woman when she left the house.  He could quite easily recognize 
Sabine.  Nothing could be simpler, and there would be no scandal, 
and he would be sure of things one way or the other.  It was only 
necessary to stay where he was.  Among all the confused feelings 
which had been agitating him he now merely felt a dull need of 
certain knowledge.  But sheer weariness and vacancy began lulling 
him to sleep under his doorway, and by way of distraction he tried 
to reckon up how long he would have to wait.  Sabine was to be at 
the station toward nine o'clock; that meant about four hours and a 
half more.  He was very patient; he would even have been content not 
to move again, and he found a certain charm in fancying that his 
night vigil would last through eternity.

Suddenly the streak of light was gone.  This extremely simple event 
was to him an unforeseen catastrophe, at once troublesome and 
disagreeable.  Evidently they had just put the lamp out and were 
going to sleep.  lt was reasonable enough at that hour, but he was 
irritated thereat, for now the darkened window ceased to interest 
him.  He watched it for a quarter of an hour longer and then grew 
tired and, leaving the doorway, took a turn upon the pavement.  
Until five o'clock he walked to and fro, looking upward from time to 
time.  The window seemed a dead thing, and now and then he asked 
himself if he had not dreamed that shadows had been dancing up there 
behind the panes.  An intolerable sense of fatigue weighed him down, 
a dull, heavy feeling, under the influence of which he forgot what 
he was waiting for at that particular street corner.  He kept 
stumbling on the pavement and starting into wakefulness with the icy 
shudder of a man who does not know where he is.  Nothing seemed to 
justify the painful anxiety he was inflicting on himself.  Since 
those people were asleep--well then, let them sleep!  What good 
could it do mixing in their affairs?  It was very dark; no one would 
ever know anything about this night's doings.  And with that every 
sentiment within him, down to curiosity itself, took flight before 
the longing to have done with it all and to find relief somewhere.  
The cold was increasing, and the street was becoming insufferable.  
Twice he walked away and slowly returned, dragging one foot behind 
the other, only to walk farther away next time.  It was all over; 
nothing was left him now, and so he went down the whole length of 
the boulevard and did not return.

His was a melancholy progress through the streets.  He walked 
slowly, never changing his pace and simply keeping along the walls 
of the houses.

His boot heels re-echoed, and he saw nothing but his shadow moving 
at his side.  As he neared each successive gaslight it grew taller 
and immediately afterward diminished.  But this lulled him and 
occupied him mechanically.  He never knew afterward where he had 
been; it seemed as if he had dragged himself round and round in a 
circle for hours.  One reminiscence only was very distinctly 
retained by him.  Without his being able to explain how it came 
about he found himself with his face pressed close against the gate 
at the end of the Passage des Panoramas and his two hands grasping 
the bars.  He did not shake them but, his whole heart swelling with 
emotion, he simply tried to look into the passage.  But he could 
make nothing out clearly, for shadows flooded the whole length of 
the deserted gallery, and the wind, blowing hard down the Rue Saint-
Marc, puffed in his face with the damp breath of a cellar.  For a 
time he tried doggedly to see into the place, and then, awakening 
from his dream, he was filled with astonishment and asked himself 
what he could possibly be seeking for at that hour and in that 
position, for he had pressed against the railings so fiercely that 
they had left their mark on his face.  Then he went on tramp once 
more.  He was hopeless, and his heart was full of infinite sorrow, 
for he felt, amid all those shadows, that he was evermore betrayed 
and alone.

Day broke at last.  It was the murky dawn that follows winter nights 
and looks so melancholy from muddy Paris pavements.  Muffat had 
returned into the wide streets, which were then in course of 
construction on either side of the new opera house.  Soaked by the 
rain and cut up by cart wheels, the chalky soil had become a lake of 
liquid mire.  But he never looked to see where he was stepping and 
walked on and on, slipping and regaining his footing as he went.  
The awakening of Paris, with its gangs of sweepers and early workmen 
trooping to their destinations, added to his troubles as day 
brightened.  People stared at him in surprise as he went by with 
scared look and soaked hat and muddy clothes.  For a long while he 
sought refuge against palings and among scaffoldings, his desolate 
brain haunted by the single remaining thought that he was very 
miserable.

Then he thought of God.  The sudden idea of divine help, of 
superhuman consolation, surprised him, as though it were something 
unforeseen and extraordinary.  The image of M. Venot was evoked 
thereby, and he saw his little plump face and ruined teeth.  
Assuredly M. Venot, whom for months he had been avoiding and thereby 
rendering miserable, would be delighted were he to go and knock at 
his door and fall weeping into his arms.  In the old days God had 
been always so merciful toward him.  At the least sorrow, the 
slightest obstacle on the path of life, he had been wont to enter a 
church, where, kneeling down, he would humble his littleness in the 
presence of Omnipotence.  And he had been used to go forth thence, 
fortified by prayer, fully prepared to give up the good things of 
this world, possessed by the single yearning for eternal salvation.  
But at present he only practiced by fits and starts, when the terror 
of hell came upon him.  All kinds of weak inclinations had overcome 
him, and the thought of Nana disturbed his devotions.  And now the 
thought of God astonished him.  Why had he not thought of God 
before, in the hour of that terrible agony when his feeble humanity 
was breaking up in ruin?

Meanwhile with slow and painful steps he sought for a church.  But 
he had lost his bearings; the early hour had changed the face of the 
streets.  Soon, however, as he turned the corner of the Rue de la 
Chaussee-d'Antin, he noticed a tower looming vaguely in the fog at 
the end of the Trinite Church.  The white statues overlooking the 
bare garden seemed like so many chilly Venuses among the yellow 
foliage of a park.  Under the porch he stood and panted a little, 
for the ascent of the wide steps had tired him.  Then he went in.  
The church was very cold, for its heating apparatus had been 
fireless since the previous evening, and its lofty, vaulted aisles 
were full of a fine damp vapor which had come filtering through the 
windows.  The aisles were deep in shadow; not a soul was in the 
church, and the only sound audible amid the unlovely darkness was 
that made by the old shoes of some verger or other who was dragging 
himself about in sulky semiwakefulness.  Muffat, however, after 
knocking forlornly against an untidy collection of chairs, sank on 
his knees with bursting heart and propped himself against the rails 
in front of a little chapel close by a font.  He clasped his hands 
and began searching within himself for suitable prayers, while his 
whole being yearned toward a transport.  But only his lips kept 
stammering empty words; his heart and brain were far away, and with 
them he returned to the outer world and began his long, unresting 
march through the streets, as though lashed forward by implacable 
necessity.  And he kept repeating, "O my God, come to my assistance!  
O my God, abandon not Thy creature, who delivers himself up to Thy 
justice!  O my God, I adore Thee: Thou wilt not leave me to perish 
under the buffetings of mine enemies!"  Nothing answered: the 
shadows and the cold weighed upon him, and the noise of the old 
shoes continued in the distance and prevented him praying.  Nothing, 
indeed, save that tiresome noise was audible in the deserted church, 
where the matutinal sweeping was unknown before the early masses had 
somewhat warmed the air of the place.  After that he rose to his 
feet with the help of a chair, his knees cracking under him as he 
did so.  God was not yet there.  And why should he weep in M. 
Venot's arms?  The man could do nothing.

And then mechanically he returned to Nana's house.  Outside he 
slipped, and he felt the tears welling to his eyes again, but he was 
not angry with his lot--he was only feeble and ill.  Yes, he was too 
tired; the rain had wet him too much; he was nipped with cold, but 
the idea of going back to his great dark house in the Rue Miromesnil 
froze his heart.  The house door at Nana's was not open as yet, and 
he had to wait till the porter made his appearance.  He smiled as he 
went upstairs, for he already felt penetrated by the soft warmth of 
that cozy retreat, where he would be able to stretch his limbs and 
go to sleep.

When Zoe opened the door to him she gave a start of most uneasy 
astonishment.  Madame had been taken ill with an atrocious sick 
headache, and she hadn't closed her eyes all night.  Still, she 
could quite go and see whether Madame had gone to sleep for good.  
And with that she slipped into the bedroom while he sank back into 
one of the armchairs in the drawing room.  But almost at that very 
moment Nana appeared.  She had jumped out of bed and had scarce had 
time to slip on a petticoat.  Her feet were bare, her hair in wild 
disorder, her nightgown all crumpled.

"What!  You here again?" she cried with a red flush on her cheeks.

Up she rushed, stung by sudden indignation, in order herself to 
thrust him out of doors.  But when she saw him in such sorry plight--
nay, so utterly done for--she felt infinite pity.

"Well, you are a pretty sight, my dear fellow!" she continued more 
gently.  "But what's the matter?  You've spotted them, eh?  And it's 
given you the hump?"

He did not answer; he looked like a broken-down animal.  
Nevertheless, she came to the conclusion that he still lacked 
proofs, and to hearten him up the said:

"You see now?  I was on the wrong tack.  Your wife's an honest 
woman, on my word of honor!  And now, my little friend, you must go 
home to bed.  You want it badly."

He did not stir.

"Now then, be off!  I can't keep you here.  But perhaps you won't 
presume to stay at such a time as this?"

"Yes, let's go to bed," he stammered.

She repressed a violent gesture, for her patience was deserting her.  
Was the man going crazy?

"Come, be off!" she repeated.

"No."

But she flared up in exasperation, in utter rebellion.

"It's sickening!  Don't you understand I'm jolly tired of your 
company?  Go and find your wife, who's making a cuckold of you.  
Yes, she's making a cuckold of you.  I say so--yes, I do now.  
There, you've got the sack!  Will you leave me or will you not?"

Muffat's eyes filled with tears.  He clasped his hands together.

"Oh, let's go to bed!"

At this Nana suddenly lost all control over herself and was choked 
by nervous sobs.  She was being taken advaatage of when all was said 
and done!  What had these stories to do with her?  She certainly had 
used all manner of delicate methods in order to teach him his lesson 
gently.  And now he was for making her pay the damages!  No, thank 
you!  She was kindhearted, but not to that extent.

"The devil, but I've had enough of this!" she swore, bringing her 
fist down on the furniture.  "Yes, yes, I wanted to be faithful--it 
was all I could do to be that!  Yet if I spoke the word I could be 
rich tomorrow, my dear fellow!"

He looked up in surprise.  Never once had he thought of the monetary 
question.  If she only expressed a desire he would realize it at 
once; his whole fortune was at her service.

"No, it's too late now," she replied furiously.  "I like men who 
give without being asked.  No, if you were to offer me a million for 
a single interview I should say no!  It's over between us; I've got 
other fish to fry there!  So be off or I shan't answer for the 
consequences.  I shall do something dreadful!"

She advanced threateningly toward him, and while she was raving, as 
became a good courtesan who, though driven to desperation, was yet 
firmly convinced of her rights and her superiority over tiresome, 
honest folks, the door opened suddenly and Steiner presented 
himself.  That proved the finishing touch.  She shrieked aloud:

"Well, I never.  Here's the other one!"

Bewildered by her piercing outcry, Steiner stopped short.  Muffat's 
unexpected presence annoyed him, for he feared an explanation and 
had been doing his best to avoid it these three months past.  With 
blinking eyes he stood first on one leg, then on the other, looking 
embarrassed the while and avoiding the count's gaze.  He was out of 
breath, and as became a man who had rushed across Paris with good 
news, only to find himself involved in unforeseen trouble, his face 
was flushed and distorted.

"Que veux-tu, toi?" asked Nana roughly, using the second person 
singular in open mockery of the count.

"What--what do I--" he stammered.  "I've got it for you--you know 
what."

"Eh?"

He hesitated.  The day before yesterday she had given him to 
understand that if he could not find her a thousand francs to pay a 
bill with she would not receive him any more.  For two days he had 
been loafing about the town in quest of the money and had at last 
made the sum up that very morning.

"The thousand francs!" he ended by declaring as he drew an envelope 
from his pocket.

Nana had not remembered.

"The thousand francs!" she cried.  "D'you think I'm begging alms?  
Now look here, that's what I value your thousand francs at!"

And snatching the envelope, she threw it full in his face.  As 
became a prudent Hebrew, he picked it up slowly and painfully and 
then looked at the young woman with a dull expression of face.  
Muffat and he exchanged a despairing glance, while she put her arms 
akimbo in order to shout more loudly than before.

"Come now, will you soon have done insulting me?  I'm glad you've 
come, too, dear boy, because now you see the clearance'll be quite 
complete.  Now then, gee up!  Out you go!"

Then as they did not hurry in the least, for they were paralyzed:

"D'you mean to say I'm acting like a fool, eh?  It's likely enough!  
But you've bored me too much!  And, hang it all, I've had enough of 
swelldom!  If I die of what I'm doing--well, it's my fancy!"

They sought to calm her; they begged her to listen to reason.

"Now then, once, twice, thrice!  Won't you go?  Very well!  Look 
there!  I've got company."

And with a brisk movement she flung wide the bedroom door.  
Whereupon in the middle of the tumbled bed the two men caught sight 
of Fontan.  He had not expected to be shown off in this situation; 
nevertheless, he took things very easily, for he was used to sudden 
surprises on the stage.  Indeed, after the first shock he even hit 
upon a grimace calculated to tide him honorably over his difficulty; 
he "turned rabbit," as he phrased it, and stuck out his lips and 
wrinkled up his nose, so as completely to transform the lower half 
of his face.  His base, satyrlike head seemed to exude incontinence.  
It was this man Fontan then whom Nana had been to fetch at the 
Varieties every day for a week past, for she was smitten with that 
fierce sort of passion which the grimacing ugliness of a low 
comedian is wont to inspire in the genus courtesan.

"There!" she said, pointing him out with tragic gesture.

Muffat, who hitherto had pocketed everything, rebelled at this 
affront.

"Bitch!" he stammered.

But Nana, who was once more in the bedroom, came back in order to 
have the last word.

"How am I a bitch?  What about your wife?"

And she was off and, slamming the door with a bang, she noisily 
pushed to the bolt.  Left alone, the two men gazed at one another in 
silence.  Zoe had just come into the room, but she did not drive 
them out.  Nay, she spoke to them in the most sensible manner.  As 
became a woman with a head on her shoulders, she decided that 
Madame's conduct was rather too much of a good thing.  But she 
defended her, nonetheless: this union with the play actor couldn't 
last; the madness must be allowed to pass off!  The two men retired 
without uttering a sound.  On the pavement outside they shook hands 
silently, as though swayed by a mutual sense of fraternity.  Then 
they turned their backs on one another and went crawling off in 
opposite directions.

When at last Muffat entered his town house in the Rue Miromesnil his 
wife was just arriving.  The two met on the great staircase, whose 
walls exhaled an icy chill.  They lifted up their eyes and beheld 
one another.  The count still wore his muddy clothes, and his pale, 
bewildered face betrayed the prodigal returning from his debauch.  
The countess looked as though she were utterly fagged out by a night 
in the train.  She was dropping with sleep, but her hair had been 
brushed anyhow, and her eyes were deeply sunken.



CHAPTER VIII


We are in a little set of lodgings on the fourth floor in the Rue 
Veron at Montmartre.  Nana and Fontan have invited a few friends to 
cut their Twelfth-Night cake with them.  They are giving their 
housewarming, though they have been only three days settled.

They had no fixed intention of keeping house together, but the whole 
thing had come about suddenly in the first glow of the honeymoon.  
After her grand blowup, when she had turned the count and the banker 
so vigorously out of doors, Nana felt the world crumbling about her 
feet.  She estimated the situation at a glance; the creditors would 
swoop down on her anteroom, would mix themselves up with her love 
affairs and threaten to sell her little all unless she continued to 
act sensibly.  Then, too, there would be no end of disputes and 
carking anxieties if she attempted to save her furniture from their 
clutches.  And so she preferred giving up everything.  Besides, the 
flat in the Boulevard Haussmann was plaguing her to death.  It was 
so stupid with its great gilded rooms!  In her access of tenderness 
for Fontan she began dreaming of a pretty little bright chamber.  
Indeed, she returned to the old ideals of the florist days, when her 
highest ambition was to have a rosewood cupboard with a plate-glass 
door and a bed hung with blue "reps."  In the course of two days she 
sold what she could smuggle out of the house in the way of 
knickknacks and jewelry and then disappeared, taking with her ten 
thousand francs and never even warning the porter's wife.  It was a 
plunge into the dark, a merry spree; never a trace was left behind.  
In this way she would prevent the men from coming dangling after 
her.  Fontain was very nice.  He did not say no to anything but just 
let her do as she liked.  Nay, he even displayed an admirable spirit 
of comradeship.  He had, on his part, nearly seven thousand francs, 
and despite the fact that people accused him of stinginess, he 
consented to add them to the young woman's ten thousand.  The sum 
struck them as a solid foundation on which to begin housekeeping.  
And so they started away, drawing from their common hoard, in order 
to hire and furnish the two rooms in the Rue Veron, and sharing 
everything together like old friends.  In the early days it was 
really delicious.

On Twelfth Night Mme Lerat and Louiset were the first to arrive.  As 
Fontan had not yet come home, the old lady ventured to give 
expression to her fears, for she trembled to see her niece 
renouncing the chance of wealth.

"Oh, Aunt, I love him so dearly!" cried Nana, pressing her hands to 
her heart with the prettiest of gestures.

This phrase produced an extraordinary effect on Mme Lerat, and tears 
came into her eyes.

"That's true," she said with an air of conviction.  "Love before all 
things!"

And with that she went into raptures over the prettiness of the 
rooms.  Nana took her to see the bedroom, the parlor and the very 
kitchen.  Gracious goodness, it wasn't a vast place, but then, they 
had painted it afresh and put up new wallpapers.  Besides, the sun 
shone merrily into it during the daytime.

Thereupon Mme Lerat detained the young woman in the bedroom, while 
Louiset installed himself behind the charwoman in the kitchen in 
order to watch a chicken being roasted.  If, said Mme Lerat, she 
permitted herself to say what was in her mind, it was because Zoe 
had just been at her house.  Zoe had stayed courageously in the 
breach because she was devoted to her mistress.  Madame would pay 
her later on; she was in no anxiety about that!  And amid the 
breakup of the Boulevard Haussmann establishment it was she who 
showed the creditors a bold front; it was she who conducted a 
dignified retreat, saving what she could from the wreck and telling 
everyone that her mistress was traveling.  She never once gave them 
her address.  Nay, through fear of being followed, she even deprived 
herself of the pleasure of calling on Madame.  Nevertheless, that 
same morning she had run round to Mme Lerat's because matters were 
taking a new turn.  The evening before creditors in the persons of 
the upholsterer, the charcoal merchant and the laundress had put in 
an appearance and had offered to give Madame an extension of time.  
Nay, they had even proposed to advance Madame a very considerable 
amount if only Madame would return to her flat and conduct herself 
like a sensible person.  The aunt repeated Zoe's words. Without 
doubt there was a gentleman behind it all.

"I'll never consent!" declared Nana in great disgust.  "Ah, they're 
a pretty lot those tradesmen!  Do they think I'm to be sold so that 
they can get their bills paid? Why, look here, I'd rather die of 
hunger than deceive Fontan."

"That's what I said," averred Mme Lerat. "'My niece,' I said, 'is 
too noble-hearted!'"

Nana, however, was much vexed to learn that La Mignotte was being 
sold and that Labordette was buying it for Caroline Hequet at an 
absurdly low price.  It made her angry with that clique.  Oh, they 
were a regular cheap lot, in spite of their airs and graces!  Yes, 
by Jove, she was worth more than the whole lot of them!

"They can have their little joke out," she concluded, "but money 
will never give them true happiness!  Besides, you know, Aunt, I 
don't even know now whether all that set are alive or not.  I'm much 
too happy."

At that very moment Mme Maloir entered, wearing one of those hats of 
which she alone understood the shape.  It was delightful meeting 
again.  Mme Maloir explained that magnificence frightened her and 
that NOW, from time to time, she would come back for her game of 
bezique.  A second visit was paid to the different rooms in the 
lodgings, and in the kitchen Nana talked of economy in the presence 
of the charwoman, who was basting the fowl, and said that a servant 
would have cost too much and that she was herself desirous of 
looking after things.  Louiset was gazing beatifically at the 
roasting process.

But presently there was a loud outburst of voices.  Fontan had come 
in with Bosc and Prulliere, and the company could now sit down to 
table.  The soup had been already served when Nana for the third 
time showed off the lodgings.

"Ah, dear children, how comfortable you are here!"  Bosc kept 
repeating, simply for the sake of pleasing the chums who were 
standing the dinner.  At bottom the subject of the "nook," as he 
called it, nowise touched him.

In the bedroom he harped still more vigorously on the amiable note.  
Ordinarily he was wont to treat women like cattle, and the idea of a 
man bothering himself about one of the dirty brutes excited within 
him the only angry feelings of which, in his comprehensive, drunken 
disdain of the universe, he was still capable.

"Ah, ah, the villains," he continued with a wink, "they've done this 
on the sly.  Well, you were certainly right.  It will be charming, 
and, by heaven, we'll come and see you!"

But when Louiset arrived on the scene astride upon a broomstick, 
Prulliere chuckled spitefully and remarked:

"Well, I never!  You've got a baby already?"

This struck everybody as very droll, and Mme Lerat and Mme Maloir 
shook with laughter.  Nana, far from being vexed, laughed tenderly 
and said that unfortunately this was not the case.  She would very 
much have liked it, both for the little one's sake and for her own, 
but perhaps one would arrive all the same.  Fontan, in his role of 
honest citizen, took Louiset in his arms and began playing with him 
and lisping.

"Never mind!  It loves its daddy!  Call me 'Papa,' you little 
blackguard!"

"Papa, Papa!" stammered the child.

The company overwhelmed him with caresses, but Bosc was bored and 
talked of sitting down to table.  That was the only serious business 
in life.  Nana asked her guests' permission to put Louiset's chair 
next her own.  The dinner was very merry, but Bosc suffered from the 
near neighborhood of the child, from whom he had to defend his 
plate.  Mme Lerat bored him too.  She was in a melting mood and kept 
whispering to him all sorts of mysterious things about gentlemen of 
the first fashion who were still running after Nana.  Twice he had 
to push away her knee, for she was positively invading him in her 
gushing, tearful mood.  Prulliere behaved with great incivility 
toward Mme Maloir and did not once help her to anything.  He was 
entirely taken up with Nana and looked annoyed at seeing her with 
Fontan.  Besides, the turtle doves were kissing so excessively as to 
be becoming positive bores.  Contrary to all known rules, they had 
elected to sit side by side.

"Devil take it!  Why don't you eat?  You've got plenty of time ahead 
of you!"  Bosc kept repeating with his mouth full.  "Wait till we 
are gone!"

But Nana could not restrain herself.  She was in a perfect ecstasy 
of love.  Her face was as full of blushes as an innocent young 
girl's, and her looks and her laughter seemed to overflow with 
tenderness.  Gazing on Fontan, she overwhelmed him with pet names--
"my doggie, my old bear, my kitten"--and whenever he passed her the 
water or the salt she bent forward and kissed him at random on lips, 
eyes, nose or ear.  Then if she met with reproof she would return to 
the attack with the cleverest maneuvers and with infinite 
submissiveness and the supple cunning of a beaten cat would catch 
hold of his hand when no one was looking, in order to kiss it again.  
It seemed she must be touching something belonging to him.  As to 
Fontan, he gave himself airs and let himself be adored with the 
utmost condescension.  His great nose sniffed with entirely sensual 
content; his goat face, with its quaint, monstrous ugliness, 
positively glowed in the sunlight of devoted adoration lavished upon 
him by that superb woman who was so fair and so plump of limb.  
Occasionally he gave a kiss in return, as became a man who is having 
all the enjoyment and is yet willing to behave prettily.

"Well, you're growing maddening!" cried Prulliere.  "Get away from 
her, you fellow there!"

And he dismissed Fontan and changed covers, in order to take his 
place at Nana's side.  The company shouted and applauded at this and 
gave vent to some stiffish epigrammatic witticisms.  Fontan 
counterfeited despair and assumed the quaint expression of Vulcan 
crying for Venus.  Straightway Prulliere became very gallant, but 
Nana, whose foot he was groping for under the table, caught him a 
slap to make him keep quiet.  No, no, she was certainly not going to 
become his mistress.  A month ago she had begun to take a fancy to 
him because of his good looks, but now she detested him.  If he 
pinched her again under pretense of picking up her napkin, she would 
throw her glass in his face!

Nevertheless, the evening passed off well.  The company had 
naturally begun talking about the Varietes.  Wasn't that cad of a 
Bordenave going to go off the hooks after all?  His nasty diseases 
kept reappearing and causing him such suffering that you couldn't 
come within six yards of him nowadays.  The day before during 
rehearsal he had been incessantly yelling at Simonne.  There was a 
fellow whom the theatrical people wouldn't shed many tears over.  
Nana announced that if he were to ask her to take another part she 
would jolly well send him to the rightabout.  Moreover, she began 
talking of leaving the stage; the theater was not to compare with 
her home.  Fontan, who was not in the present piece or in that which 
was then being rehearsed, also talked big about the joy of being 
entirely at liberty and of passing his evenings with his feet on the 
fender in the society of his little pet.  And at this the rest 
exclaimed delightedly, treating their entertainers as lucky people 
and pretending to envy their felicity.

The Twelfth-Night cake had been cut and handed round.  The bean had 
fallen to the lot of Mme Lerat, who popped it into Bosc's glass.  
Whereupon there were shouts of "The king drinks!  The king drinks!"  
Nana took advantage of this outburst of merriment and went and put 
her arms round Fontan's neck again, kissing him and whispering in 
his ear.  But Prulliere, laughing angrily, as became a pretty man, 
declared that they were not playing the game.  Louiset, meanwhile, 
slept soundly on two chairs.  It was nearing one o'clock when the 
company separated, shouting au revoir as they went downstairs.

For three weeks the existence of the pair of lovers was really 
charming.  Nana fancied she was returning to those early days when 
her first silk dress had caused her infinite delight.  She went out 
little and affected a life of solitude and simplicity.  One morning 
early, when she had gone down to buy fish IN PROPRIA PERSONA in La 
Rouchefoucauld Market, she was vastly surprised to meet her old hair 
dresser Francis face to face.  His getup was as scrupulously careful 
as ever: he wore the finest linen, and his frock coat was beyond 
reproach; in fact, Nana felt ashamed that he should see her in the 
street with a dressing jacket and disordered hair and down-at-heel 
shoes.  But he had the tact, if possible, to intensify his 
politeness toward her.  He did not permit himself a single inquiry 
and affected to believe that Madame was at present on her travels.  
Ah, but Madame had rendered many persons unhappy when she decided to 
travel!  All the world had suffered loss.  The young woman, however, 
ended by asking him questions, for a sudden fit of curiosity had 
made her forget her previous embarrassment.  Seeing that the crowd 
was jostling them, she pushed him into a doorway and, still holding 
her little basket in one hand, stood chatting in front of him.  What 
were people saying about her high jinks?  Good heavens!  The ladies 
to whom he went said this and that and all sorts of things.  In 
fact, she had made a great noise and was enjoying a real boom: And 
Steiner?  M. Steiner was in a very bad way, would make an ugly 
finish if he couldn't hit on some new commercial operation.  And 
Daguenet?  Oh, HE was getting on swimmingly.  M. Daguenet was 
settling down.  Nana, under the exciting influence of various 
recollections, was just opening her mouth with a view to a further 
examination when she felt it would be awkward to utter Muffat's 
name.  Thereupon Francis smiled and spoke instead of her.  As to 
Monsieur le Comte, it was all a great pity, so sad had been his 
sufferings since Madame's departure.

He had been like a soul in pain--you might have met him wherever 
Madame was likely to be found.  At last M. Mignon had come across 
him and had taken him home to his own place.  This piece of news 
caused Nana to laugh a good deal.  But her laughter was not of the 
easiest kind.

"Ah, he's with Rose now," she said.  "Well then, you must know, 
Francis, I've done with him!  Oh, the canting thing!  It's learned 
some pretty habits--can't even go fasting for a week now!  And to 
think that he used to swear he wouldn't have any woman after me!"

She was raging inwardly.

"My leavings, if you please!" she continued.  "A pretty Johnnie for 
Rose to go and treat herself to!  Oh, I understand it all now: she 
wanted to have her revenge because I got that brute of a Steiner 
away from her.  Ain't it sly to get a man to come to her when I've 
chucked him out of doors?"

"M. Mignon doesn't tell that tale," said the hairdresser.  
"According to his account, it was Monsieur le Comte who chucked you 
out.  Yes, and in a pretty disgusting way too--with a kick on the 
bottom!"

Nana became suddenly very pale.

"Eh, what?" she cried.  "With a kick on my bottom?  He's going too 
far, he is!  Look here, my little friend, it was I who threw him 
downstairs, the cuckold, for he is a cuckold, I must inform you.  
His countess is making him one with every man she meets--yes, even 
with that good-for-nothing of a Fauchery.  And that Mignon, who goes 
loafing about the pavement in behalf of his harridan of a wife, whom 
nobody wants because she's so lean!  What a foul lot!  What a foul 
lot!"

She was choking, and she paused for breath

"Oh, that's what they say, is it?  Very well, my little Francis, 
I'll go and look 'em up, I will.  Shall you and I go to them at 
once?  Yes, I'll go, and we'll see whether they will have the cheek 
to go telling about kicks on the bottom.  Kick's!  I never took one 
from anybody!  And nobody's ever going to strike me--d'ye see?--for 
I'd smash the man who laid a finger on me!"

Nevertheless, the storm subsided at last.  After all, they might 
jolly well what they liked!  She looked upon them as so much filth 
underfoot!  It would have soiled her to bother about people like 
that.  She had a conscience of her own, she had!  And Francis, 
seeing her thus giving herself away, what with her housewife's 
costume and all, became familiar and, at parting, made so bold as to 
give her some good advice.  It was wrong of her to be sacrificing 
everything for the sake of an infatuation; such infatuations ruined 
existence.  She listened to him with bowed head while he spoke to 
her with a pained expression, as became a connoisseur who could not 
bear to see so fine a girl making such a hash of things.

"Well, that's my affair," she said at last "Thanks all the same, 
dear boy."  She shook his hand, which despite his perfect dress was 
always a little greasy, and then went off to buy her fish.  During 
the day that story about the kick on the bottom occupied her 
thoughts.  She even spoke about it to Fontan and again posed as a 
sturdy woman who was not going to stand the slightest flick from 
anybody.  Fontan, as became a philosophic spirit, declared that all 
men of fashion were beasts whom it was one's duty to despise.  And 
from that moment forth Nana was full of very real disdain.

That same evening they went to the Bouffes-Parisiens Theatre to see 
a little woman of Fontan's acquaintance make her debut in a part of 
some ten lines.  It was close on one o'clock when they once more 
trudged up the heights of Montmartre.  They had purchased a cake, a 
"mocha," in the Rue de la Chaussee-d'Antin, and they ate it in bed, 
seeing that the night was not warm and it was not worth while 
lighting a fire.  Sitting up side by side, with the bedclothes 
pulled up in front and the pillows piled up behind, they supped and 
talked about the little woman.  Nana thought her plain and lacking 
in style.  Fontan, lying on his stomach, passed up the pieces of 
cake which had been put between the candle and the matches on the 
edge of the night table.  But they ended by quarreling.

"Oh, just to think of it!" cried Nana.  "She's got eyes like gimlet 
holes, and her hair's the color of tow."

"Hold your tongue, do!" said Fontan.  "She has a superb head of hair 
and such fire in her looks!  It's lovely the way you women always 
tear each other to pieces!"

He looked annoyed.

"Come now, we've had enough of it!" he said at last in savage tones.  
"You know I don't like being bored.  Let's go to sleep, or things'll 
take a nasty turn."

And he blew out the candle, but Nana was furious and went on 
talking.  She was not going to be spoken to in that voice; she was 
accustomed to being treated with respect!  As he did not vouchsafe 
any further answer, she was silenced, but she could not go to sleep 
and lay tossing to and fro.

"Great God, have you done moving about?" cried he suddenly, giving a 
brisk jump upward.

"It isn't my fault if there are crumbs in the bed," she said curtly.

In fact, there were crumbs in the bed.  She felt them down to her 
middle; she was everywhere devoured by them.  One single crumb was 
scorching her and making her scratch herself till she bled.  
Besides, when one eats a cake isn't it usual to shake out the 
bedclothes afterward?  Fontan, white with rage, had relit the 
candle, and they both got up and, barefooted and in their night 
dresses, they turned down the clothes and swept up the crumbs on the 
sheet with their hands.  Fontan went to bed again, shivering, and 
told her to go to the devil when she advised him to wipe the soles 
of his feet carefully.  And in the end she came back to her old 
position, but scarce had she stretched herself out than she danced 
again.  There were fresh crumbs in the bed!

"By Jove, it was sure to happen!" she cried.  "You've brought them 
back again under your feet.  I can't go on like this!  No, I tell 
you, I can't go on like this!"

And with that she was on the point of stepping over him in order to 
jump out of bed again, when Fontan in his longing for sleep grew 
desperate and dealt her a ringing box on the ear.  The blow was so 
smart that Nana suddenly found herself lying down again with her 
head on the pillow.

She lay half stunned.

"Oh!" she ejaculated simply, sighing a child's big sigh.

For a second or two he threatened her with a second slap, asking her 
at the same time if she meant to move again.  Then he put out the 
light, settled himself squarely on his back and in a trice was 
snoring.  But she buried her face in the pillow and began sobbing 
quietly to herself.  It was cowardly of him to take advantage of his 
superior strength!  She had experienced very real terror all the 
same, so terrible had that quaint mask of Fontan's become.  And her 
anger began dwindling down as though the blow had calmed her.  She 
began to feel respect toward him and accordingly squeezed herself 
against the wall in order to leave him as much room as possible.  
She even ended by going to sleep, her cheek tingling, her eyes full 
of tears and feeling so deliciously depressed and wearied and 
submissive that she no longer noticed the crumbs.  When she woke up 
in the morning she was holding Fontain in her naked arms and 
pressing him tightly against her breast.  He would never begin it 
again, eh?  Never again?  She loved him too dearly.  Why, it was 
even nice to be beaten if he struck the blow!

After that night a new life began.  For a mere trifle--a yes, a no--
Fontan would deal her a blow.  She grew accustomed to it and 
pocketed everything.  Sometimes she shed tears and threatened him, 
but he would pin her up against the wall and talk of strangling her, 
which had the effect of rendering her extremely obedient.  As often 
as not, she sank down on a chair and sobbed for five minutes on end.  
But afterward she would forget all about it, grow very merry, fill 
the little lodgings with the sound of song and laughter and the 
rapid rustle of skirts.  The worst of it was that Fontan was now in 
the habit of disappearing for the whole day and never returning home 
before midnight, for he was going to cafes and meeting his old 
friends again.  Nana bore with everything.  She was tremulous and 
caressing, her only fear being that she might never see him again if 
she reproached him.  But on certain days, when she had neither Mme 
Maloir nor her aunt and Louiset with her, she grew mortally dull.  
Thus one Sunday, when she was bargaining for some pigeons at La 
Rochefoucauld Market, she was delighted to meet Satin, who, in her 
turn, was busy purchasing a bunch of radishes.  Since the evening 
when the prince had drunk Fontan's champagne they had lost sight of 
one another.

"What?  It's you!  D'you live in our parts?" said Satin, astounded 
at seeing her in the street at that hour of the morning and in 
slippers too.  "Oh, my poor, dear girl, you're really ruined then!"

Nana knitted her brows as a sign that she was to hold her tongue, 
for they were surrounded by other women who wore dressing gowns and 
were without linen, while their disheveled tresses were white with 
fluff.  In the morning, when the man picked up overnight had been 
newly dismissed, all the courtesans of the quarter were wont to come 
marketing here, their eyes heavy with sleep, their feet in old down-
at-heel shoes and themselves full of the weariness and ill humor 
entailed by a night of boredom.  From the four converging streets 
they came down into the market, looking still rather young in some 
cases and very pale and charming in their utter unconstraint; in 
others, hideous and old with bloated faces and peeling skin.  The 
latter did not the least mind being seen thus outside working hours, 
and not one of them deigned to smile when the passers-by on the 
sidewalk turned round to look at them.  Indeed, they were all very 
full of business and wore a disdainful expression, as became good 
housewives for whom men had ceased to exist.  Just as Satin, for 
instance, was paying for her bunch of radishes a young man, who 
might have been a shop-boy going late to his work, threw her a 
passing greeting:

"Good morning, duckie."

She straightened herself up at once and with the dignified manner 
becoming an offended queen remarked:

"What's up with that swine there?"

Then she fancied she recognized him.  Three days ago toward 
midnight, as the was coming back alone from the boulevards, she had 
talked to him at the corner of the Rue Labruyere for nearly half an 
hour, with a view to persuading him to come home with her.  But this 
recollection only angered her the more.

"Fancy they're brutes enough to shout things to you in broad 
daylight!" she continued.  "When one's out on business one ought to 
be respecifully treated, eh?"

Nana had ended by buying her pigeons, although she certainly had her 
doubts of their freshness.  After which Satin wanted to show her 
where she lived in the Rue Rochefoucauld close by.  And the moment 
they were alone Nana told her of her passion for Fontan.  Arrived in 
front of the house, the girl stopped with her bundle of radishes 
under her arm and listened eagerly to a final detail which the other 
imparted to her.  Nana fibbed away and vowed that it was she who had 
turned Count Muffat out of doors with a perfect hail of kickastliness of 
the men.  Nana was overpowering on the subject of Fontan.  She could 
not say a dozen words without lapsing into endless repetitions of 
his sayings and his doings.  But Satin, like a good-natured girl, 
would listen unwearyingly to everlasting accounts of how Nana had 
watched for him at the window, how they had fallen out over a burnt 
dish of hash and how they had made it up in bed after hours of 
silent sulking.  In her desire to be always talking about these 
things Nana had gs on the 
posterior.

"Oh how smart!" Satin repeated.  "How very smart!  Kicks, eh?  And 
he never said a word, did he?  What a blooming coward!  I wish I'd 
been there to see his ugly mug!  My dear girl, you were quite right.  
A pin for the coin!  When I'M on with a mash I starve for it!  
You'll come and see me, eh?  You promise?  It's the left-hand door.  
Knock three knocks, for there's a whole heap of damned squints 
about."

After that whenever Nana grew too weary of life she went down and 
saw Satin.  She was always sure of finding her, for the girl never 
went out before six in the evening.  Satin occupied a couple of 
rooms which a chemist had furnished for her in order to save her 
from the clutches of the police, but in little more than a 
twelvemonth she had broken the furniture, knocked in the chairs, 
dirtied the curtains, and that in a manner so furiously filthy and 
untidy that the lodgings seemed as though inhabited by a pack of mad 
cats.  On the mornings when she grew disgusted with herself and 
thought about cleaning up a bit, chair rails and strips of curtain 
would come off in her hands during her struggle with superincumbent 
dirt.  On such days the place was fouler than ever, and it was 
impossible to enter it, owing to the things which had fallen down 
across the doorway.  At length she ended by leaving her house 
severely alone.  When the lamp was lit the cupboard with plate-glass 
doors, the clock and what remained of the curtains still served to 
impose on the men.  Besides, for six months past her landlord had 
been threatening to evict her.  Well then, for whom should she be 
keeping the furniture nice?  For him more than anyone else, perhaps!  
And so whenever she got up in a merry mood she would shout "Gee up!" 
and give the sides of the cupboard and the chest of drawers such a 
tremendous kick that they cracked again.

Nana nearly always found her in bed.  Even on the days when Satin 
went out to do her marketing she felt so tired on her return 
upstairs that she flung herself down on the bed and went to sleep 
again.  During the day she dragged herself about and dozed off on 
chairs.  Indeed, she did not emerge from this languid condition till 
the evening drew on and the gas was lit outside.  Nana felt very 
comfortable at Satin's, sitting doing nothing on the untidy bed, 
while basins stood about on the floor at her feet and petticoats 
which had been bemired last night hung over the backs of armchairs 
and stained them with mud.  They had long gossips together and were 
endlessly confidential, while Satin lay on her stomach in her 
nightgown, waving her legs above her head and smoking cigarettes as 
she listened.  Sometimes on such afternoons as they had troubles to 
retail they treated themselves to absinthe in order, as they termed 
it, "to forget."  Satin did not go downstairs or put on a petticoat 
but simply went and leaned over the banisters and shouted her order 
to the portress's little girl, a chit of ten, who when she brought 
up the absinthe in a glass would look furtively at the lady's bare 
legs.  Every conversation led up to one subject--the beot to tell of every slap that he dealt her. 
Last 
week he had given her a swollen eye; nay, the night before he had 
given her such a box on the ear as to throw her across the night 
table, and all because he could not find his slippers.  And the 
other woman did not evince any astonishment but blew out cigarette 
smoke and only paused a moment to remark that, for her part, she 
always ducked under, which sent the gentleman pretty nearly 
sprawling.  Both of them settled down with a will to these anecdotes 
about blows; they grew supremely happy and excited over these same 
idiotic doings about which they told one another a hundred times or 
more, while they gave themselves up to the soft and pleasing sense 
of weariness which was sure to follow the drubbings they talked of.  
It was the delight of rediscussing Fontan's blows and of explaining 
his works and his ways, down to the very manner in which he took off 
his boots, which brought Nana back daily to Satin's place.  The 
latter, moreover, used to end by growing sympathetic in her turn and 
would cite even more violent cases, as, for instance, that of a 
pastry cook who had left her for dead on the floor.  Yet she loved 
him, in spite of it all!  Then came the days on which Nana cried and 
declared that things could not go on as they were doing.  Satin 
would escort her back to her own door and would linger an hour out 
in the street to see that he did not murder her.  And the next day 
the two women would rejoice over the reconciliation the whole 
afternoon through.  Yet though they did not say so, they preferred 
the days when threshings were, so to speak, in the air, for then 
their comfortable indignation was all the stronger.

They became inseparable.  Yet Satin never went to Nana's, Fontan 
having announced that he would have no trollops in his house.  They 
used to go out together, and thus it was that Satin one day took her 
friend to see another woman.  This woman turned out to be that very 
Mme Robert who had interested Nana and inspired her with a certain 
respect ever since she had refused to come to her supper.  Mme 
Robert lived in the Rue Mosnier, a silent, new street in the 
Quartier de l'Europe, where there were no shops, and the handsome 
houses with their small, limited flats were peopled by ladies.  It 
was five o'clock, and along the silent pavements in the quiet, 
aristocratic shelter of the tall white houses were drawn up the 
broughams of stock-exchange people and merchants, while men walked 
hastily about, looking up at the windows, where women in dressing 
jackets seemed to be awaiting them.  At first Nana refused to go up, 
remarking with some constraint that she had not the pleasure of the 
lady's acquaintance.  But Satin would take no refusal.  She was only 
desirous of paying a civil call, for Mme Robert, whom she had met in 
a restaurant the day before, had made herself extremely agreeable 
and had got her to promise to come and see her.  And at last Nana 
consented.  At the top of the stairs a little drowsy maid informed 
them that Madame had not come home yet, but she ushered them into 
the drawing room notwithstanding and left them there.

"The deuce, it's a smart show!" whispered Satin.  It was a stiff, 
middle-class room, hung with dark-colored fabrics, and suggested the 
conventional taste of a Parisian shopkeeper who has retired on his 
fortune.  Nana was struck and did her best to make merry about it.  
But Satin showed annoyance and spoke up for Mme Robert's strict 
adherence to the proprieties.  She was always to be met in the 
society of elderly, grave-looking men, on whose arms she leaned.  At 
present she had a retired chocolate seller in tow, a serious soul.  
Whenever he came to see her he was so charmed by the solid, handsome 
way in which the house was arranged that he had himself announced 
and addressed its mistress as "dear child."

"Look, here she is!" continued Satin, pointing to a photograph which 
stood in front of the clock.  Nana scrutinized the portrait for a 
second or so.  It represented a very dark brunette with a longish 
face and lips pursed up in a discreet smile.  "A thoroughly 
fashionable lady," one might have said of the likeness, "but one who 
is rather more reserved than the rest."

"It's strange," murmured Nana at length, "but I've certainly seen 
that face somewhere.  Where, I don't remember.  But it can't have 
been in a pretty place--oh no, I'm sure it wasn't in a pretty 
place."

And turning toward her friend, she added, "So she's made you promise 
to come and see her?  What does she want with you?"

"What does she want with me?  'Gad!  To talk, I expect--to be with 
me a bit.  It's her politeness."

Nana looked steadily at Satin.  "Tut, tut," she said softly.  After 
all, it didn't matter to her!  Yet seeing that the lady was keeping 
them waiting, she declared that she would not stay longer, and 
accordingly they both took their departure.

The next day Fontan informed Nana that he was not coming home to 
dinner, and she went down early to find Satin with a view to 
treating her at a restaurant.  The choice of the restaurant involved 
infinite debate.  Satin proposed various brewery bars, which Nana 
thought detestable, and at last persuaded her to dine at Laure's.  
This was a table d'hote in the Rue des Martyrs, where the dinner 
cost three francs.

Tired of waiting for the dinner hour and not knowing what to do out 
in the street, the pair went up to Laure's twenty minutes too early.  
The three dining rooms there were still empty, and they sat down at 
a table in the very saloon where Laure Piedefer was enthroned on a 
high bench behind a bar.  This Laure was a lady of some fifty 
summers, whose swelling contours were tightly laced by belts and 
corsets.  Women kept entering in quick procession, and each, in 
passing, craned upward so as to overtop the saucers raised on the 
counter and kissed Laure on the mouth with tender familiarity, while 
the monstrous creature tried, with tears in her eyes, to divide her 
attentions among them in such a way as to make no one jealous.  On 
the other hand, the servant who waited on the ladies was a tall, 
lean woman.  She seemed wasted with disease, and her eyes were 
ringed with dark lines and glowed with somber fire.  Very rapidly 
the three saloons filled up.  There were some hundred customers, and 
they had seated themselves wherever they could find vacant places.  
The majority were nearing the age of forty: their flesh was puffy 
and so bloated by vice as almost to hide the outlines of their 
flaccid mouths.  But amid all these gross bosoms and figures some 
slim, pretty girls were observable.  These still wore a modest 
expression despite their impudent gestures, for they were only 
beginners in their art, who had started life in the ballrooms of the 
slums and had been brought to Laure's by some customer or other.  
Here the tribe of bloated women, excited by the sweet scent of their 
youth, jostled one another and, while treating them to dainties, 
formed a perfect court round them, much as old amorous bachelors 
might have done.  As to the men, they were not numerous.  There were 
ten or fifteen of them at the outside, and if we except four tall 
fellows who had come to see the sight and were cracking jokes and 
taking things easy, they behaved humbly enough amid this whelming 
flood of petticoats.

"I say, their stew's very good, ain't it?" said Satin.

Nana nodded with much satisfaction.  It was the old substantial 
dinner you get in a country hotel and consisted of vol-au-vent a la 
financiere, fowl boiled in rice, beans with a sauce and vanilla 
creams, iced and flavored with burnt sugar.  The ladies made an 
especial onslaught on the boiled fowl and rice: their stays seemed 
about to burst; they wiped their lips with slow, luxurious 
movements.  At first Nana had been afraid of meeting old friends who 
might have asked her silly questions, but she grew calm at last, for 
she recognized no one she knew among that extremely motley throng, 
where faded dresses and lamentable hats contrasted strangely with 
handsome costumes, the wearers of which fraternized in vice with 
their shabbier neighbors.  She was momentarily interested, however, 
at the sight of a young man with short curly hair and insolent face 
who kept a whole tableful of vastly fat women breathlessly attentive 
to his slightest caprice.  But when the young man began to laugh his 
bosom swelled.

"Good lack, it's a woman!"

She let a little cry escape as she spoke, and Satin, who was 
stuffing herself with boiled fowl, lifted up her head and whispered:

"Oh yes!  I know her.  A smart lot, eh?  They do just fight for 
her."

Nana pouted disgustingly.  She could not understand the thing as 
yet.  Nevertheless, she remarked in her sensible tone that there was 
no disputing about tastes or colors, for you never could tell what 
you yourself might one day have a liking for.  So she ate her cream 
with an air of philosophy, though she was perfectly well aware that 
Satin with her great blue virginal eyes was throwing the neighboring 
tables into a state of great excitement.  There was one woman in 
particular, a powerful, fair-haired person who sat close to her and 
made herself extremely agreeable.  She seemed all aglow with 
affection and pushed toward the girl so eagerly that Nana was on the 
point of interfering.

But at that very moment a woman who was entering the room gave her a 
shock of surprise.  Indeed, she had recognized Mme Robert.  The 
latter, looking, as was her wont, like a pretty brown mouse, nodded 
familiarly to the tall, lean serving maid and came and leaned upon 
Laure's counter.  Then both women exchanged a long kiss.  Nana 
thought such an attention on the part of a woman so distinguished 
looking very amusing, the more so because Mme Robert had quite 
altered her usual modest expression.  On the contrary, her eye roved 
about the saloon as she kept up a whispered conversation.  Laure had 
resumed her seat and once more settled herself down with all the 
majesty of an old image of Vice, whose face has been worn and 
polished by the kisses of the faithful.  Above the range of loaded 
plates she sat enthroned in all the opulence which a hotelkeeper 
enjoys after forty years of activity, and as she sat there she 
swayed her bloated following of large women, in comparison with the 
biggest of whom she seemed monstrous.

But Mme Robert had caught sight of Satin, and leaving Laure, she ran 
up and behaved charmingly, telling her how much she regretted not 
having been at home the day before.  When Satin, however, who was 
ravished at this treatment, insisted on finding room for her at the 
table, she vowed she had already dined.  She had simply come up to 
look about her.  As she stood talking behind her new friend's chair 
she leaned lightly on her shoulders and in a smiling, coaxing manner 
remarked:

"Now when shall I see you?  If you were free--"

Nana unluckily failed to hear more.  The conversation vexed her, and 
she was dying to tell this honest lady a few home truths.  But the 
sight of a troop of new arrivals paralyzed her.  It was composed of 
smart, fashionably dressed women who were wearing their diamonds.  
Under the influence of perverse impulse they had made up a party to 
come to Laure's--whom, by the by, they all treated with great 
familiarity--to eat the three-franc dinner while flashing their 
jewels of great price in the jealous and astonished eyes of poor, 
bedraggled prostitutes.  The moment they entered, talking and 
laughing in their shrill, clear tones and seeming to bring sunshine 
with them from the outside world, Nana turned her head rapidly away.  
Much to her annoyance she had recognized Lucy Stewart and Maria 
Blond among them, and for nearly five minutes, during which the 
ladies chatted with Laure before passing into the saloon beyond, she 
kept her head down and seemed deeply occupied in rolling bread pills 
on the cloth in front of her.  But when at length she was able to 
look round, what was her astonishment to observe the chair next to 
hers vacant!  Satin had vanished.

"Gracious, where can she be?" she loudly ejaculated.

The sturdy, fair woman who had been overwhelming Satin with civil 
attentions laughed ill-temperedly, and when Nana, whom the laugh 
irritated, looked threatening she remarked in a soft, drawling way:

"It's certainly not me that's done you this turn; it's the other 
one!"

Thereupon Nana understood that they would most likely make game of 
her and so said nothing more.  She even kept her seat for some 
moments, as she did not wish to show how angry she felt.  She could 
hear Lucy Stewart laughing at the end of the next saloon, where she 
was treating a whole table of little women who had come from the 
public balls at Montmartre and La Chapelle.  It was very hot; the 
servant was carrying away piles of dirty plates with a strong scent 
of boiled fowl and rice, while the four gentlemen had ended by 
regaling quite half a dozen couples with capital wine in the hope of 
making them tipsy and hearing some pretty stiffish things.  What at 
present most exasperated Nana was the thought of paying for Satin's 
dinner.  There was a wench for you, who allowed herself to be amused 
and then made off with never a thank-you in company with the first 
petticoat that came by!  Without doubt it was only a matter of three 
francs, but she felt it was hard lines all the same--her way of 
doing it was too disgusting.  Nevertheless, she paid up, throwing 
the six francs at Laure, whom at the moment she despised more than 
the mud in the street.  In the Rue des Martyrs Nana felt her 
bitterness increasing.  She was certainly not going to run after 
Satin!  It was a nice filthy business for one to be poking one's 
nose into!  But her evening was spoiled, and she walked slowly up 
again toward Montmartre, raging against Mme Robert in particular.  
Gracious goodness, that woman had a fine cheek to go playing the 
lady--yes, the lady in the dustbin!  She now felt sure she had met 
her at the Papillon, a wretched public-house ball in the Rue des 
Poissonniers, where men conquered her scruples for thirty sous.  And 
to think a thing like that got hold of important functionaries with 
her modest looks!  And to think she refused suppers to which one did 
her the honor of inviting her because, forsooth, she was playing the 
virtuous game!  Oh yes, she'd get virtued!  It was always those 
conceited prudes who went the most fearful lengths in low corners 
nobody knew anything about.

Revolving these matters, Nana at length reached her home in the Rue 
Veron and was taken aback on observing a light in the window.  
Fontan had come home in a sulk, for he, too, had been deserted by 
the friend who had been dining with him.  He listened coldly to her 
explanations while she trembled lest he should strike her.  It 
scared her to find him at home, seeing that she had not expected him 
before one in the morning, and she told him a fib and confessed that 
she had certainly spent six francs, but in Mme Maloir's society.  He 
was not ruffled, however, and he handed her a letter which, though 
addressed to her, he had quietly opened.  It was a letter from 
Georges, who was still a prisoner at Les Fondettes and comforted 
himself weekly with the composition of glowing pages.  Nana loved to 
be written to, especially when the letters were full of grand, 
loverlike expressions with a sprinkling of vows.  She used to read 
them to everybody.  Fontan was familiar with the style employed by 
Georges and appreciated it.  But that evening she was so afraid of a 
scene that she affected complete indifference, skimming through the 
letter with a sulky expression and flinging it aside as soon as 
read.  Fontan had begun beating a tattoo on a windowpane; the 
thought of going to bed so early bored him, and yet he did not know 
how to employ his evening.  He turned briskly round:

"Suppose we answer that young vagabond at once," he said.

It was the custom for him to write the letters in reply.  He was 
wont to vie with the other in point of style.  Then, too, he used to 
be delighted when Nana, grown enthusiastic after the letter had been 
read over aloud, would kiss him with the announcement that nobody 
but he could "say things like that."  Thus their latent affections 
would be stirred, and they would end with mutual adoration.

"As you will," she replied.  "I'll make tea, and we'll go to bed 
after."

Thereupon Fontan installed himself at the table on which pen, ink 
and paper were at the same time grandly displayed.  He curved his 
arm; he drew a long face.

"My heart's own," he began aloud.

And for more than an hour he applied himself to his task, polishing 
here, weighing a phrase there, while he sat with his head between 
his hands and laughed inwardly whenever he hit upon a peculiarly 
tender expression.  Nana had already consumed two cups of tea in 
silence, when at last he read out the letter in the level voice and 
with the two or three emphatic gestures peculiar to such 
performances on the stage.  It was five pages long, and he spoke 
therein of "the delicious hours passed at La Mignotte, those hours 
of which the memory lingered like subtle perfume."  He vowed 
"eternal fidelity to that springtide of love" and ended by declaring 
that his sole wish was to "recommence that happy time if, indeed, 
happiness can recommence."

"I say that out of politeness, y'know," he explained.  "The moment 
it becomes laughable--eh, what!  I think she's felt it, she has!"

He glowed with triumph.  But Nana was unskillful; she still 
suspected an outbreak and now was mistaken enough not to fling her 
arms round his neck in a burst of admiration.  She thought the 
letter a respectable performance, nothing more.  Thereupon he was 
much annoyed.  If his letter did not please her she might write 
another!  And so instead of bursting out in loverlike speeches and 
exchanging kisses, as their wont was, they sat coldly facing one 
another at the table.  Nevertheless, she poured him out a cup of 
tea.

"Here's a filthy mess," he cried after dipping his lips in the 
mixture.  "You've put salt in it, you have!"

Nana was unlucky enough to shrug her shoulders, and at that he grew 
furious.

"Aha!  Things are taking a wrong turn tonight!"

And with that the quarrel began.  It was only ten by the clock, and 
this was a way of killing time.  So he lashed himself into a rage 
and threw in Nana's teeth a whole string of insults and all kinds of 
accusations which followed one another so closely that she had no 
time to defend herself.  She was dirty; she was stupid; she had 
knocked about in all sorts of low places!  After that he waxed 
frantic over the money question.  Did he spend six francs when he 
dined out?  No, somebody was treating him to a dinner; otherwise he 
would have eaten his ordinary meal at home.  And to think of 
spending them on that old procuress of a Maloir, a jade he would 
chuck out of the house tomorrow!  Yes, by jingo, they would get into 
a nice mess if he and she were to go throwing six francs out of the 
window every day!

"Now to begin with, I want your accounts," he shouted.  "Let's see; 
hand over the money!  Now where do we stand?"

All his sordid avaricious instincts came to the surface.  Nana was 
cowed and scared, and she made haste to fetch their remaining cash 
out of the desk and to bring it him.  Up to that time the key had 
lain on this common treasury, from which they had drawn as freely as 
they wished.

"How's this?" he said when he had counted up the money.  "There are 
scarcely seven thousand francs remaining out of seventeen thousand, 
and we've only been together three months.  The thing's impossible."

He rushed forward, gave the desk a savage shake and brought the 
drawer forward in order to ransack it in the light of the lamp.  But 
it actually contained only six thousand eight hundred and odd 
francs.  Thereupon the tempest burst forth.

"Ten thousand francs in three months!" he yelled.  "By God!  What 
have you done with it all?  Eh?  Answer!  It all goes to your jade 
of an aunt, eh?  Or you're keeping men; that's plain!  Will you 
answer?"

"Oh well, if you must get in a rage!" said Nana.  "Why, the 
calculation's easily made!  You haven't allowed for the furniture; 
besides, I've had to buy linen.  Money goes quickly when one's 
settling in a new place."

But while requiring explanations he refused to listen to them.

"Yes, it goes a deal too quickly!" he rejoined more calmly.  "And 
look here, little girl, I've had enough of this mutual housekeeping.  
You know those seven thousand francs are mine.  Yes, and as I've got 
'em, I shall keep 'em!  Hang it, the moment you become wasteful I 
get anxious not to be ruined.  To each man his own."

And he pocketed the money in a lordly way while Nana gazed at him, 
dumfounded.  He continued speaking complaisantly:

"You must understand I'm not such a fool as to keep aunts and 
likewise children who don't belong to me.  You were pleased to spend 
your own money--well, that's your affair!  But my money--no, that's 
sacred!  When in the future you cook a leg of mutton I'll pay for 
half of it.  We'll settle up tonight--there!"

Straightway Nana rebelled.  She could not help shouting:

"Come, I say, it's you who've run through my ten thousand francs.  
It's a dirty trick, I tell you!"

But he did not stop to discuss matters further, for he dealt her a 
random box on the ear across the table, remarking as he did so:

"Let's have that again!"

She let him have it again despite his blow.  Whereupon he fell upon 
her and kicked and cuffed her heartily.  Soon he had reduced her to 
such a state that she ended, as her wont was, by undressing and 
going to bed in a flood of tears.

He was out of breath and was going to bed, in his turn, when he 
noticed the letter he had written to Georges lying on the table.  
Whereupon he folded it up carefully and, turning toward the bed, 
remarked in threatening accents:

"It's very well written, and I'm going to post it myself because I 
don't like women's fancies.  Now don't go moaning any more; it puts 
my teeth on edge."

Nana, who was crying and gasping, thereupon held her breath.  When 
he was in bed she choked with emotion and threw herself upon his 
breast with a wild burst of sobs.  Their scuffles always ended thus, 
for she trembled at the thought of losing him and, like a coward, 
wanted always to feel that he belonged entirely to her, despite 
everything.  Twice he pushed her magnificently away, but the warm 
embrace of this woman who was begging for mercy with great, tearful 
eyes, as some faithful brute might do, finally aroused desire.  And 
he became royally condescending without, however, lowering his 
dignity before any of her advances.  In fact, he let himself be 
caressed and taken by force, as became a man whose forgiveness is 
worth the trouble of winning.  Then he was seized with anxiety, 
fearing that Nana was playing a part with a view to regaining 
possession of the treasury key.  The light had been extinguished 
when he felt it necessary to reaffirm his will and pleasure.

"You must know, my girl, that this is really very serious and that I 
keep the money."

Nana, who was falling asleep with her arms round his neck, uttered a 
sublime sentiment.

"Yes, you need fear nothing!  I'll work for both of us!"

But from that evening onward their life in common became more and 
more difficult.  From one week's end to the other the noise of slaps 
filled the air and resembled the ticking of a clock by which they 
regulated their existence.  Through dint of being much beaten Nana 
became as pliable as fine linen; her skin grew delicate and pink and 
white and so soft to the touch and clear to the view that she may be 
said to have grown more good looking than ever.  Prulliere, 
moreover, began running after her like a madman, coming in when 
Fontan was away and pushing her into corners in order to snatch an 
embrace.  But she used to struggle out of his grasp, full of 
indignation and blushing with shame.  It disgusted her to think of 
him wanting to deceive a friend.  Prulliere would thereupon begin 
sneering with a wrathful expression.  Why, she was growing jolly 
stupid nowadays!  How could she take up with such an ape?  For, 
indeed, Fontan was a regular ape with that great swingeing nose of 
his.  Oh, he had an ugly mug!  Besides, the man knocked her about 
too!

"It's possible I like him as he is," she one day made answer in the 
quiet voice peculiar to a woman who confesses to an abominable 
taste.

Bosc contented himself by dining with them as often as possible.  He 
shrugged his shoulders behind Prulliere's back--a pretty fellow, to 
be sure, but a frivolous!  Bosc had on more than one occasion 
assisted at domestic scenes, and at dessert, when Fontan slapped 
Nana, he went on chewing solemnly, for the thing struck him as being 
quite in the course of nature.  In order to give some return for his 
dinner he used always to go into ecstasies over their happiness.  He 
declared himself a philosopher who had given up everything, glory 
included.  At times Prulliere and Fontan lolled back in their 
chairs, losing count of time in front of the empty table, while with 
theatrical gestures and intonation they discussed their former 
successes till two in the morning.  But he would sit by, lost in 
thought, finishing the brandy bottle in silence and only 
occasionally emitting a little contemptuous sniff.  Where was 
Talma's tradition?  Nowhere.  Very well, let them leave him jolly 
well alone!  It was too stupid to go on as they were doing!

One evening he found Nana in tears.  She took off her dressing 
jacket in order to show him her back and her arms, which were black 
and blue.  He looked at her skin without being tempted to abuse the 
opportunity, as that ass of a Prulliere would have been.  Then, 
sententiously:

"My dear girl, where there are women there are sure to be ructions.  
It was Napoleon who said that, I think.  Wash yourself with salt 
water.  Salt water's the very thing for those little knocks.  Tut, 
tut, you'll get others as bad, but don't complain so long as no 
bones are broken.  I'm inviting myself to dinner, you know; I've 
spotted a leg of mutton."

But Mme Lerat had less philosophy.  Every time Nana showed her a 
fresh bruise on the white skin she screamed aloud.  They were 
killing her niece; things couldn't go on as they were doing.  As a 
matter of fact, Fontan had turned Mme Lerat out of doors and had 
declared that he would not have her at his house in the future, and 
ever since that day, when he returned home and she happened to be 
there, she had to make off through the kitchen, which was a horrible 
humiliation to her.  Accordingly she never ceased inveighing against 
that brutal individual.  She especially blamed his ill breeding, 
pursing up her lips, as she did so, like a highly respectable lady 
whom nobody could possibly remonstrate with on the subject of good 
manners.

"Oh, you notice it at once," she used to tell Nana; "he hasn't the 
barest notion of the very smallest proprieties.  His mother must 
have been common!  Don't deny it--the thing's obvious!  I don't 
speak on my own account, though a person of my years has a right to 
respectful treatment, but YOU--how do YOU manage to put up with his 
bad manners?  For though I don't want to flatter myself, I've always 
taught you how to behave, and among our own people you always 
enjoyed the best possible advice.  We were all very well bred in our 
family, weren't we now?"

Nana used never to protest but would listen with bowed head.

"Then, too," continued the aunt, "you've only known perfect 
gentlemen hitherto.  We were talking of that very topic with Zoe at 
my place yesterday evening.  She can't understand it any more than I 
can.  'How is it,' she said, 'that Madame, who used to have that 
perfect gentleman, Monsieur le Comte, at her beck and call'--for 
between you and me, it seems you drove him silly--'how is it that 
Madame lets herself be made into mincemeat by that clown of a 
fellow?'  I remarked at the time that you might put up with the 
beatings but that I would never have allowed him to be lacking in 
proper respect.  In fact, there isn't a word to be said for him.  I 
wouldn't have his portrait in my room even!  And you ruin yourself 
for such a bird as that; yes, you ruin yourself, my darling; you 
toil and you moil, when there are so many others and such rich men, 
too, some of them even connected with the government!  Ah well, it's 
not I who ought to be telling you this, of course!  But all the 
same, when next he tries any of his dirty tricks on I should cut him 
short with a 'Monsieur, what d'you take me for?'  You know how to 
say it in that grand way of yours!  It would downright cripple him."

Thereupon Nana burst into sobs and stammered out:

"Oh, Aunt, I love him!"

The fact of the matter was that Mme Lerat was beginning to feel 
anxious at the painful way her niece doled out the sparse, 
occasional francs destined to pay for little Louis's board and 
lodging.  Doubtless she was willing to make sacrifices and to keep 
the child by her whatever might happen while waiting for more 
prosperous times, but the thought that Fontan was preventing her and 
the brat and its mother from swimming in a sea of gold made her so 
savage that she was ready to deny the very existence of true love.  
Accordingly she ended up with the following severe remarks:

"Now listen, some fine day when he's taken the skin off your back, 
you'll come and knock at my door, and I'll open it to you."

Soon money began to engross Nana's whole attention.  Fontan had 
caused the seven thousand francs to vanish away.  Without doubt they 
were quite safe; indeed, she would never have dared ask him 
questions about them, for she was wont to be blushingly diffident 
with that bird, as Mme Lerat called him.  She trembled lest he 
should think her capable of quarreling with him about halfpence.  He 
had certainly promised to subscribe toward their common household 
expenses, and in the early days he had given out three francs every 
morning.  But he was as exacting as a boarder; he wanted everything 
for his three francs--butter, meat, early fruit and early 
vegetables--and if she ventured to make an observation, if she 
hinted that you could not have everything in the market for three 
francs, he flew into a temper and treated her as a useless, wasteful 
woman, a confounded donkey whom the tradespeople were robbing.  
Moreover, he was always ready to threaten that he would take 
lodgings somewhere else.  At the end of a month on certain mornings 
he had forgotten to deposit the three francs on the chest of 
drawers, and she had ventured to ask for them in a timid, roundabout 
way.  Whereupon there had been such bitter disputes and he had 
seized every pretext to render her life so miserable that she had 
found it best no longer to count upon him.  Whenever, however, he 
had omitted to leave behind the three one-franc pieces and found a 
dinner awaiting him all the same, he grew as merry as a sandboy, 
kissed Nana gallantly and waltzed with the chairs.  And she was so 
charmed by this conduct that she at length got to hope that nothing 
would be found on the chest of drawers, despite the difficulty she 
experienced in making both ends meet.  One day she even returned him 
his three francs, telling him a tale to the effect that she still 
had yesterday's money.  As he had given her nothing then, he 
hesitated for some moments, as though he dreaded a lecture.  But she 
gazed at him with her loving eyes and hugged him in such utter self-
surrender that he pocketed the money again with that little 
convulsive twitch or the fingers peculiar to a miser when he regains 
possession of that which has been well-nigh lost.  From that day 
forth he never troubled himself about money again or inquired whence 
it came.  But when there were potatoes on the table he looked 
intoxicated with delight and would laugh and smack his lips before 
her turkeys and legs of mutton, though of course this did not 
prevent his dealing Nana sundry sharp smacks, as though to keep his 
hand in amid all his happiness.

Nana had indeed found means to provide for all needs, and the place 
on certain days overflowed with good things.  Twice a week, 
regularly, Bosc had indigestion.  One evening as Mme Lerat was 
withdrawing from the scene in high dudgeon because she had noticed a 
copious dinner she was not destined to eat in process of 
preparation, she could not prevent herself asking brutally who paid 
for it all.  Nana was taken by surprise; she grew foolish and began 
crying.

"Ah, that's a pretty business," said the aunt, who had divined her 
meaning.

Nana had resigned herself to it for the sake of enjoying peace in 
her own home.  Then, too, the Tricon was to blame.  She had come 
across her in the Rue de Laval one fine day when Fontan had gone out 
raging about a dish of cod.  She had accordingly consented to the 
proposals made her by the Tricon, who happened just then to be in 
difficulty.  As Fontan never came in before six o'clock, she made 
arrangements for her afternoons and used to bring back forty francs, 
sixty francs, sometimes more.  She might have made it a matter of 
ten and fifteen louis had she been able to maintain her former 
position, but as matters stood she was very glad thus to earn enough 
to keep the pot boiling.  At night she used to forget all her 
sorrows when Bosc sat there bursting with dinner and Fontan leaned 
on his elbows and with an expression of lofty superiority becoming a 
man who is loved for his own sake allowed her to kiss him on the 
eyelids.

In due course Nana's very adoration of her darling, her dear old 
duck, which was all the more passionately blind, seeing that now she 
paid for everything, plunged her back into the muddiest depths of 
her calling.  She roamed the streets and loitered on the pavement in 
quest of a five-franc piece, just as when she was a slipshod baggage 
years ago.  One Sunday at La Rochefoucauld Market she had made her 
peace with Satin after having flown at her with furious reproaches 
about Mme Robert.  But Satin had been content to answer that when 
one didn't like a thing there was no reason why one should want to 
disgust others with it.  And Nana, who was by way of being wide-
minded, had accepted the philosophic view that you never can tell 
where your tastes will lead you and had forgiven her.  Her curiosity 
was even excited, and she began questioning her about obscure vices 
and was astounded to be adding to her information at her time of 
life and with her knowledge.  She burst out laughing and gave vent 
to various expressions of surprise.  It struck her as so queer, and 
yet she was a little shocked by it, for she was really quite the 
philistine outside the pale of her own habits.  So she went back to 
Laure's and fed there when Fontan was dining out.  She derived much 
amusement from the stories and the amours and the jealousies which 
inflamed the female customers without hindering their appetites in 
the slightest degree.  Nevertheless, she still was not quite in it, 
as she herself phrased it.  The vast Laure, meltingly maternal as 
ever, used often to invite her to pass a day or two at her Asnieries 
Villa, a country house containing seven spare bedrooms.  But she 
used to refuse; she was afraid.  Satin, however, swore she was 
mistaken about it, that gentlemen from Paris swung you in swings and 
played tonneau with you, and so she promised to come at some future 
time when it would be possible for her to leave town.

At that time Nana was much tormented by circumstances and not at all 
festively inclined.  She needed money, and when the Tricon did not 
want her, which too often happened, she had no notion where to 
bestow her charms.  Then began a series of wild descents upon the 
Parisian pavement, plunges into the baser sort of vice, whose 
votaries prowl in muddy bystreets under the restless flicker of gas 
lamps.  Nana went back to the public-house balls in the suburbs, 
where she had kicked up her heels in the early ill-shod days.  She 
revisited the dark corners on the outer boulevards, where when she 
was fifteen years old men used to hug her while her father was 
looking for her in order to give her a hiding.  Both the women would 
speed along, visiting all the ballrooms and restaurants in a quarter 
and climbing innumerable staircases which were wet with spittle and 
spilled beer, or they would stroll quietly about, going up streets 
and planting themselves in front of carriage gates.  Satin, who had 
served her apprenticeship in the Quartier Latin, used to take Nana 
to Bullier's and the public houses in the Boulevard Saint-Michel.  
But the vacations were drawing on, and the Quarter looked too 
starved.  Eventually they always returned to the principal 
boulevards, for it was there they ran the best chance of getting 
what they wanted.  From the heights of Montmartre to the observatory 
plateau they scoured the whole town in the way we have been 
describing.  They were out on rainy evenings, when their boots got 
worn down, and on hot evenings, when their linen clung to their 
skins.  There were long periods of waiting and endless periods of 
walking; there were jostlings and disputes and the nameless, brutal 
caresses of the stray passer-by who was taken by them to some 
miserable furnished room and came swearing down the greasy stairs 
afterward.

The summer was drawing to a close, a stormy summer of burning 
nights.  The pair used to start out together after dinner, toward 
nine o'clock.  On the pavements of the Rue Notre Dame de la Lorette 
two long files of women scudded along with tucked-up skirts and bent 
heads, keeping close to the shops but never once glancing at the 
displays in the shopwindows as they hurried busily down toward the 
boulevards.  This was the hungry exodus from the Quartier Breda 
which took place nightly when the street lamps had just been lit.  
Nana and Satin used to skirt the church and then march off along the 
Rue le Peletier.  When they were some hundred yards from the Cafe 
Riche and had fairly reached their scene of operations they would 
shake out the skirts of their dresses, which up till that moment 
they had been holding carefully up, and begin sweeping the 
pavements, regardless of dust.  With much swaying of the hips they 
strolled delicately along, slackening their pace when they crossed 
the bright light thrown from one of the great cafes.  With shoulders 
thrown back, shrill and noisy laughter and many backward glances at 
the men who turned to look at them, they marched about and were 
completely in their element.  In the shadow of night their 
artificially whitened faces, their rouged lips and their darkened 
eyelids became as charming and suggestive as if the inmates of a 
make-believe trumpery oriental bazaar had been sent forth into the 
open street.  Till eleven at night they sauntered gaily along among 
the rudely jostling crowds, contenting themselves with an occasional 
"dirty ass!" hurled after the clumsy people whose boot heels had 
torn a flounce or two from their dresses.  Little familiar 
salutations would pass between them and the cafe waiters, and at 
times they would stop and chat in front of a small table and accept 
of drinks, which they consumed with much deliberation, as became 
people not sorry to sit down for a bit while waiting for the 
theaters to empty.  But as night advanced, if they had not made one 
or two trips in the direction of the Rue la Rochefoucauld, they 
became abject strumpets, and their hunt for men grew more ferocious 
than ever.  Beneath the trees in the darkening and fast-emptying 
boulevards fierce bargainings took place, accompanied by oaths and 
blows.  Respectable family parties--fathers, mothers and daughters--
who were used to such scenes, would pass quietly by the while 
without quickening their pace.  Afterward, when they had walked from 
the opera to the GYMNASE some half-score times and in the deepening 
night men were rapidly dropping off homeward for good and all, Nana 
and Satin kept to the sidewalk in the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre.  
There up till two o'clock in the morning restaurants, bars and ham-
and-beef shops were brightly lit up, while a noisy mob of women hung 
obstinately round the doors of the cafes.  This suburb was the only 
corner of night Paris which was still alight and still alive, the 
only market still open to nocturnal bargains.  These last were 
openly struck between group and group and from one end of the street 
to the other, just as in the wide and open corridor of a disorderly 
house.  On such evenings as the pair came home without having had 
any success they used to wrangle together.  The Rue Notre Dame de la 
Lorette stretched dark and deserted in front of them.  Here and 
there the crawling shadow of a woman was discernible, for the 
Quarter was going home and going home late, and poor creatures, 
exasperated at a night of fruitless loitering, were unwilling to 
give up the chase and would still stand, disputing in hoarse voices 
with any strayed reveler they could catch at the corner of the Rue 
Breda or the Rue Fontaine.

Nevertheless, some windfalls came in their way now and then in the 
shape of louis picked up in the society of elegant gentlemen, who 
slipped their decorations into their pockets as they went upstairs 
with them.  Satin had an especially keen scent for these.  On rainy 
evenings, when the dripping city exhaled an unpleasant odor 
suggestive of a great untidy bed, she knew that the soft weather and 
the fetid reek of the town's holes and corners were sure to send the 
men mad.  And so she watched the best dressed among them, for she 
knew by their pale eyes what their state was.  On such nights it was 
as though a fit of fleshly madness were passing over Paris.  The 
girl was rather nervous certainly, for the most modish gentlemen 
were always the most obscene.  All the varnish would crack off a 
man, and the brute beast would show itself, exacting, monstrous in 
lust, a past master in corruption.  But besides being nervous, that 
trollop of a Satin was lacking in respect.  She would blurt out 
awful things in front of dignified gentlemen in carriages and assure 
them that their coachmen were better bred than they because they 
behaved respectfully toward the women and did not half kill them 
with their diabolical tricks and suggestions.  The way in which 
smart people sprawled head over heels into all the cesspools of vice 
still caused Nana some surprise, for she had a few prejudices 
remaining, though Satin was rapidly destroying them.

"Well then," she used to say when talking seriously about the 
matter, "there's no such thing as virtue left, is there?"

From one end of the social ladder to the other everybody was on the 
loose!  Good gracious!  Some nice things ought to be going on in 
Paris between nine o'clock in the evening and three in the morning!  
And with that she began making very merry and declaring that if one 
could only have looked into every room one would have seen some 
funny sights--the little people going it head over ears and a good 
lot of swells, too, playing the swine rather harder than the rest.  
Oh, she was finishing her education!

One evenlng when she came to call for Satin she recognized the 
Marquis de Chouard.  He was coming downstairs with quaking legs; his 
face was ashen white, and he leaned heavily on the banisters.  She 
pretended to be blowing her nose.  Upstairs she found Satin amid 
indescribable filth.  No household work had been done for a week; 
her bed was disgusting, and ewers and basins were standing about in 
all directions.  Nana expressed surprise at her knowing the marquis.  
Oh yes, she knew him!  He had jolly well bored her confectioner and 
her when they were together.  At present he used to come back now 
and then, but he nearly bothered her life out, going sniffing into 
all the dirty corners--yes, even into her slippers!

"Yes, dear girl, my slippers!  Oh, he's the dirtiest old beast, 
always wanting one to do things!"

The sincerity of these low debauches rendered Nana especially 
uneasy.  Seeing the courtesans around her slowly dying of it every 
day, she recalled to mind the comedy of pleasure she had taken part 
in when she was in the heyday of success.  Moreover, Satin inspired 
her with an awful fear of the police.  She was full of anecdotes 
about them.  Formerly she had been the mistress of a plain-clothes 
man, had consented to this in order to be left in peace, and on two 
occasions he had prevented her from being put "on the lists."  But 
at present she was in a great fright, for if she were to be nabbed 
again there was a clear case against her.  You had only to listen to 
her!  For the sake of perquisites the police used to take up as many 
women as possible.  They laid hold of everybody and quieted you with 
a slap if you shouted, for they were sure of being defended in their 
actions and rewarded, even when they had taken a virtuous girl among 
the rest.  In the summer they would swoop upon the boulevard in 
parties of twelve or fifteen, surround a whole long reach of 
sidewalk and fish up as many as thirty women in an evening.  Satin, 
however, knew the likely places, and the moment she saw a plain-
clothes man heaving in sight she took to her heels, while the long 
lines of women on the pavements scattered in consternation and fled 
through the surrounding crowd.  The dread of the law and of the 
magistracy was such that certain women would stand as though 
paralyzed in the doorways of the cafes while the raid was sweeping 
the avenue without.  But Satin was even more afraid of being 
denounced, for her pastry cook had proved blackguard enough to 
threaten to sell her when she had left him.  Yes, that was a fake by 
which men lived on their mistresses!  Then, too, there were the 
dirty women who delivered you up out of sheer treachery if you were 
prettier than they!  Nana listened to these recitals and felt her 
terrors growing upon her.  She had always trembled before the law, 
that unknown power, that form of revenge practiced by men able and 
willing to crush her in the certain absence of all defenders.  
Saint-Lazare she pictured as a grave, a dark hole, in which they 
buried live women after they had cut off their hair.  She admitted 
that it was only necessary to leave Fontan and seek powerful 
protectors.  But as matters stood it was in vain that Satin talked 
to her of certain lists of women's names, which it was the duty of 
the plainclothes men to consult, and of certain photographs 
accompanying the lists, the originals of which were on no account to 
be touched.  The reassurance did not make her tremble the less, and 
she still saw herself hustled and dragged along and finally 
subjected to the official medical inspection.  The thought of the 
official armchair filled her with shame and anguish, for had she not 
bade it defiance a score of times?

Now it so happened that one evening toward the close of September, 
as she was walking with Satin in the Boulevard Poissonniere, the 
latter suddenly began tearing along at a terrible pace.  And when 
Nana asked her what she meant thereby:

"It's the plain-clothes men!" whispered Satin.  "Off with you!  Off 
with you!"  A wild stampede took place amid the surging crowd.  
Skirts streamed out behind and were torn.  There were blows and 
shrieks.  A woman fell down.  The crowd of bystanders stood 
hilariously watching this rough police raid while the plain-clothes 
men rapidly narrowed their circle.  Meanwhile Nana had lost Satin.  
Her legs were failing her, and she would have been taken up for a 
certainty had not a man caught her by the arm and led her away in 
front of the angry police.  It was Prulliere, and he had just 
recognized her.  Without saying a word he turned down the Rue 
Rougemont with her.  It was just then quite deserted, and she was 
able to regain breath there, but at first her faintness and 
exhaustion were such that he had to support her.  She did not even 
thank him.

"Look here," he said, "you must recover a bit.  Come up to my 
rooms."

He lodged in the Rue Bergere close by.  But she straightened herself 
up at once.

"No, I don't want to."

Thereupon he waxed coarse and rejoined:

"Why don't you want to, eh?  Why, everybody visits my rooms."

"Because I don't."

In her opinion that explained everything.  She was too fond of 
Fontan to betray him with one of his friends.  The other people 
ceased to count the moment there was no pleasure in the business, 
and necessity compelled her to it.  In view of her idiotic obstinacy 
Prulliere, as became a pretty fellow whose vanity had been wounded, 
did a cowardly thing.

"Very well, do as you like!" he cried.  "Only I don't side with you, 
my dear.  You must get out of the scrape by yourself."

And with that he left her.  Terrors got hold of her again, and 
scurrying past shops and turning white whenever a man drew nigh, she 
fetched an immense compass before reaching Montmartre.

On the morrow, while still suffering from the shock of last night's 
terrors, Nana went to her aunt's and at the foot of a small empty 
street in the Batignolles found herself face to face with 
Labordette.  At first they both appeared embarrassed, for with his 
usual complaisance he was busy on a secret errand.  Nevertheless, he 
was the first to regain his self-possession and to announce himself 
fortunate in meeting her.  Yes, certainly, everybody was still 
wondering at Nana's total eclipse.  People were asking for her, and 
old friends were pining.  And with that he grew quite paternal and 
ended by sermonizing.

"Frankly speaking, between you and me, my dear, the thing's getting 
stupid.  One can understand a mash, but to go to that extent, to be 
trampled on like that and to get nothing but knocks!  Are you 
playing up for the 'Virtue Prizes' then?"

She listened to him with an embarrassed expression.  But when he 
told her about Rose, who was triumphantly enjoying her conquest of 
Count Muffat, a flame came into her eyes.

"Oh, if I wanted to--" she muttered.

As became an obliging friend, he at once offered to act as 
intercessor.  But she refused his help, and he thereupon attacked 
her in an opposite quarter.

He informed her that Bordenave was busy mounting a play of 
Fauchery's containing a splendid part for her.

"What, a play with a part!" she cried in amazement.  "But he's in it 
and he's told me nothing about it!"

She did not mention Fontan by name.  However, she grew calm again 
directly and declared that she would never go on the stage again.  
Labordette doubtless remained unconvinced, for he continued with 
smiling insistence.

"You know, you need fear nothing with me.  I get your Muffat ready 
for you, and you go on the stage again, and I bring him to you like 
a little dog!"

"No!" she cried decisively.

And she left him.  Her heroic conduct made her tenderly pitiful 
toward herself.  No blackguard of a man would ever have sacrificed 
himself like that without trumpeting the fact abroad.  Nevertheless, 
she was struck by one thing: Labordette had given her exactly the 
same advice as Francis had given her.  That evening when Fontan came 
home she questioned him about Fauchery's piece.  The former had been 
back at the Varietes for two months past.  Why then had he not told 
her about the part?

"What part?" he said in his ill-humored tone.  "The grand lady's 
part, maybe?  The deuce, you believe you've got talent then!  Why, 
such a part would utterly do for you, my girl!  You're meant for 
comic business--there's no denying it!"

She was dreadfully wounded.  All that evening he kept chaffing her, 
calling her Mlle Mars.  But the harder he hit the more bravely she 
suffered, for she derived a certain bitter satisfaction from this 
heroic devotion of hers, which rendered her very great and very 
loving in her own eyes.  Ever since she had gone with other men in 
order to supply his wants her love for him had increased, and the 
fatigues and disgusts encountered outside only added to the flame.  
He was fast becoming a sort of pet vice for which she paid, a 
necessity of existence it was impossible to do without, seeing that 
blows only stimulated her desires.  He, on his part, seeing what a 
good tame thing she had become, ended by abusing his privileges.  
She was getting on his nerves, and he began to conceive so fierce a 
loathing for her that he forgot to keep count of his real interests.  
When Bosc made his customary remarks to him he cried out in 
exasperation, for which there was no apparent cause, that he had had 
enough of her and of her good dinners and that he would shortly 
chuck her out of doors if only for the sake of making another woman 
a present of his seven thousand francs.  Indeed, that was how their 
liaison ended.

One evening Nana came in toward eleven o'clock and found the door 
bolted.  She tapped once--there was no answer; twice--still no 
answer.  Meanwhile she saw light under the door, and Fontan inside 
did not trouble to move.  She rapped again unwearyingly; she called 
him and began to get annoyed.  At length Fontan's voice became 
audible; he spoke slowly and rather unctuously and uttered but this 
one word.

"MERDE!"

She beat on the door with her fists.

"MERDE!"

She banged hard enough to smash in the woodwork.

"MERDE!"

And for upward of a quarter of an hour the same foul expression 
buffeted her, answering like a jeering echo to every blow wherewith 
she shook the door.  At length, seeing that she was not growing 
tired, he opened sharply, planted himself on the threshold, folded 
his arms and said in the same cold, brutal voice:

"By God, have you done yet?  What d'you want?  Are you going to let 
us sleep in peace, eh?  You can quite see I've got company tonight."

He was certainly not alone, for Nana perceived the little woman from 
the Bouffes with the untidy tow hair and the gimlet-hole eyes, 
standing enjoying herself in her shift among the furniture she had 
paid for.  But Fontan stepped out on the landing.  He looked 
terrible, and he spread out and crooked his great fingers as if they 
were pincers.

"Hook it or I'll strangle you!"

rhereupon Nana burst into a nervous fit of sobbing.  She was 
frightened and she made off.  This time it was she that was being 
kicked out of doors.  And in her fury the thought of Muffat suddenly 
occurred to her.  Ah, to be sure, Fontan, of all men, ought never to 
have done her such a turn!

When she was out in the street her first thought was to go and sleep 
with Satin, provided the girl had no one with her.  She met her in 
front of her house, for she, too, had been turned out of doors by 
her landlord.  He had just had a padlock affixed to her door--quite 
illegally, of course, seeing that she had her own furniture.  She 
swore and talked of having him up before the commissary of police.  
In the meantime, as midnight was striking, they had to begin 
thinking of finding a bed.  And Satin, deeming it unwise to let the 
plain-clothes men into her secrets, ended by taking Nana to a woman 
who kept a little hotel in the Rue de Laval.  Here they were 
assigned a narrow room on the first floor, the window of which 
opened on the courtyard.  Satin remarked:

"I should gladly have gone to Mme Robert's.  There's always a corner 
there for me.  But with you it's out of the question.  She's getting 
absurdly jealous; she beat me the other night."

When they had shut themselves in, Nana, who had not yet relieved her 
feelings, burst into tears and again and again recounted Fontan's 
dirty behavior.  Satin listened complaisantly, comforted her, grew 
even more angry than she in denunciation of the male sex.

"Oh, the pigs, the pigs!  Look here, we'll have nothing more to do 
with them!"

Then she helped Nana to undress with all the small, busy attentions, 
becoming a humble little friend.  She kept saying coaxingly:

"Let's go to bed as fast as we can, pet.  We shall be better off 
there!  Oh, how silly you are to get crusty about things!  I tell 
you, they're dirty brutes.  Don't think any more about 'em.  I--I 
love you very much.  Don't cry, and oblige your own little darling 
girl."

And once in bed, she forthwith took Nana in her arms and soothed and 
comforted her.  She refused to hear Fontan's name mentioned again, 
and each time it recurred to her friend's lips she stopped it with a 
kiss.  Her lips pouted in pretty indignation; her hair lay loose 
about her, and her face glowed with tenderness and childlike beauty.  
Little by little her soft embrace compelled Nana to dry her tears.  
She was touched and replied to Satin's caresses.  When two o'clock 
struck the candle was still burning, and a sound of soft, smothered 
laughter and lovers' talk was audible in the room.

But suddenly a loud noise came up from the lower floors of the 
hotel, and Satin, with next to nothing on, got up and listened 
intently.

"The police!" she said, growing very pale.

"Oh, blast our bad luck!  We're bloody well done for!"

Often had she told stories about the raids on hotel made by the 
plainclothes men.  But that particular night neither of them had 
suspected anything when they took shelter in the Rue de Laval.  At 
the sound of the word "police" Nana lost her head.  She jumped out 
of bed and ran across the room with the scared look of a madwoman 
about to jump out of the window.  Luckily, however, the little 
courtyard was roofed with glass, which was covered with an iron-wire 
grating at the level of the girls' bedroom.  At sight of this she 
ceased to hesitate; she stepped over the window prop, and with her 
chemise flying and her legs bared to the night air she vanished in 
the gloom.

"Stop!  Stop!" said Satin in a great fright.  "You'll kill 
yourself."

Then as they began hammering at the door, she shut the window like a 
good-natured girl and threw her friend's clothes down into a 
cupboard.  She was already resigned to her fate and comforted 
herself with the thought that, after all, if she were to be put on 
the official list she would no longer be so "beastly frightened" as 
of yore.  So she pretended to be heavy with sleep.  She yawned; she 
palavered and ended by opening the door to a tall, burly fellow with 
an unkempt beard, who said to her:

"Show your hands!  You've got no needle pricks on them: you don't 
work.  Now then, dress!"

"But I'm not a dressmaker; I'm a burnisher," Satin brazenly 
declared.

Nevertheless, she dressed with much docility, knowing that argument 
was out of the question.  Cries were ringing through the hotel; a 
girl was clinging to doorposts and refusing to budge an inch.  
Another girl, in bed with a lover, who was answering for her 
legality, was acting the honest woman who had been grossly insulted 
and spoke of bringing an action against the prefect of police.  For 
close on an hour there was a noise of heavy shoes on the stairs, of 
fists hammering on doors, of shrill disputes terminating in sobs, of 
petticoats rustling along the walls, of all the sounds, in fact, 
attendant on the sudden awakening and scared departure of a flock of 
women as they were roughly packed off by three plain-clothes men, 
headed by a little oily-mannered, fair-haired commissary of police.  
After they had gone the hotel relapsed into deep silence.

Nobody had betrayed her; Nana was saved.  Shivering and half dead 
with fear, she came groping back into the room.  Her bare feet were 
cut and bleeding, for they had been torn by the grating.  For a long 
while she remained sitting on the edge of the bed, listening and 
listening.  Toward morning, however, she went to sleep again, and at 
eight o'clock, when she woke up, she escaped from the hotel and ran 
to her aunt's.  When Mme Lerat, who happened just then to be 
drinking her morning coffee with Zoe, beheld her bedraggled plight 
and haggard face, she took note of the hour and at once understood 
the state of the case.

"It's come to it, eh?" she cried.  "I certainly told you that he 
would take the skin off your back one of these days.  Well, well, 
come in; you'll always find a kind welcome here."

Zoe had risen from her chair and was muttering with respectful 
familiarity:

"Madame is restored to us at last.  I was waiting for Madame."

But Mme Lerat insisted on Nana's going and kissing Louiset at once, 
because, she said, the child took delight in his mother's nice ways.  
Louiset, a sickly child with poor blood, was still asleep, and when 
Nana bent over his white, scrofulous face, the memory of all she had 
undergone during the last few months brought a choking lump into her 
throat.

"Oh, my poor little one, my poor little one!" she gasped, bursting 
into a final fit of sobbing.



CHAPTER IX


The Petite Duchesse was being rehearsed at the Varietes.  The first 
act had just been carefully gone through, and the second was about 
to begin.  Seated in old armchairs in front of the stage, Fauchery 
and Bordenave were discussing various points while the prompter, 
Father Cossard, a little humpbacked man perched on a straw-bottomed 
chair, was turning over the pages of the manuscript, a pencil 
between his lips.

"Well, what are they waiting for?" cried Bordenave on a sudden, 
tapping the floor savagely with his heavy cane.  "Barillot, why 
don't they begin?"

"It's Monsieur Bosc that has disappeared," replied Barillot, who was 
acting as second stage manager.'

Then there arose a tempest, and everybody shouted for Bosc while 
Bordenave swore.

"Always the same thing, by God!  It's all very well ringing for 'em: 
they're always where they've no business to be.  And then they 
grumble when they're kept till after four o'clock."

But Bosc just then came in with supreme tranquillity.

"Eh?  What?  What do they want me for?  Oh, it's my turn!  You ought 
to have said so.  All right!  Simonne gives the cue: 'Here are the 
guests,' and I come in.  Which way must I come in?"

"Through the door, of course," cried Fauchery in great exasperation.

"Yes, but where is the door?"

At this Bordenave fell upon Barillot and once more set to work 
swearing and hammering the boards with his cane.

"By God!  I said a chair was to be put there to stand for the door, 
and every day we have to get it done again.  Barillot!  Where's 
Barillot?  Another of 'em!  Why, they're all going!"

Nevertheless, Barillot came and planted the chair down in person, 
mutely weathering the storm as he did so.  And the rehearsal began 
again.  Simonne, in her hat and furs, began moving about like a 
maidservant busy arranging furniture.  She paused to say:

"I'm not warm, you know, so I keep my hands in my muff."

Then changing her voice, she greeted Bosc with a little cry:

"La, it's Monsieur le Comte.  You're the first to come, Monsieur le 
Comte, and Madame will be delighted."

Bosc had muddy trousers and a huge yellow overcoat, round the collar 
of which a tremendous comforter was wound.  On his head he wore an 
old hat, and he kept his hands in his pockets.  He did not act but 
dragged himself along, remarking in a hollow voice:

"Don't disturb your mistress, Isabelle; I want to take her by 
surprise."

The rehearsal took its course.  Bordenave knitted his brows.  He had 
slipped down low in his armchair and was listening with an air of 
fatigue.  Fauchery was nervous and kept shifting about in his seat.  
Every few minutes he itched with the desire to interrupt, but he 
restrained himself.  He heard a whispering in the dark and empty 
house behind him.

"Is she there?" he asked, leaning over toward Bordenave.

The latter nodded affirmatively.  Before accepting the part of 
Geraldine, which he was offering her, Nana had been anxious to see 
the piece, for she hesitated to play a courtesan's part a second 
time.  She, in fact, aspired to an honest woman's part.  Accordingly 
she was hiding in the shadows of a corner box in company with 
Labordette, who was managing matters for her with Bordenave.  
Fauchery glanced in her direction and then once more set himself to 
follow the rehearsal.

Only the front of the stage was lit up.  A flaring gas burner on a 
support, which was fed by a pipe from the footlights, burned in 
front of a reflector and cast its full brightness over the immediate 
foreground.  It looked like a big yellow eye glaring through the 
surrounding semiobscurity, where it flamed in a doubtful, melancholy 
way.  Cossard was holding up his manuscript against the slender stem 
of this arrangement.  He wanted to see more clearly, and in the 
flood of light his hump was sharply outlined.  As to Bordenave and 
Fauchery, they were already drowned in shadow.  It was only in the 
heart of this enormous structure, on a few square yards of stage, 
that a faint glow suggested the light cast by some lantern nailed up 
in a railway station.  It made the actors look like eccentric 
phantoms and set their shadows dancing after them.  The remainder of 
the stage was full of mist and suggested a house in process of being 
pulled down, a church nave in utter ruin.  It was littered with 
ladders, with set pieces and with scenery, of which the faded 
painting suggested heaped-up rubbish.  Hanging high in air, the 
scenes had the appearance of great ragged clouts suspended from the 
rafters of some vast old-clothes shop, while above these again a ray 
of bright sunlight fell from a window and clove the shadow round the 
flies with a bar of gold.

Meanwhile actors were chatting at the back of the stage while 
awaiting their cues.  Little by little they had raised their voices.

"Confound it, will you be silent?" howled Bordenave, raging up and 
down in his chair.  "I can't hear a word.  Go outside if you want to 
talk; WE are at work.  Barillot, if there's any more talking I clap 
on fines all round!"

They were silent for a second or two.  They were sitting in a little 
group on a bench and some rustic chairs in the corner of a scenic 
garden, which was standing ready to be put in position as it would 
be used in the opening act the same evening.  In the middle of this 
group Fontan and Prulliere were listening to Rose Mignon, to whom 
the manager of the Folies-Dramatique Theatre had been making 
magnificent offers.  But a voice was heard shouting:

"The duchess!  Saint-Firmin!  The duchess and Saint-Firmin are 
wanted!"

Only when the call was repeated did Prulliere remember that he was 
Saint-Firmin!  Rose, who was playing the Duchess Helene, was already 
waiting to go on with him while old Bosc slowly returned to his 
seat, dragging one foot after the other over the sonorous and 
deserted boards.  Clarisse offered him a place on the bench beside 
her.

"What's he bawling like that for?" she said in allusion to 
Bordenave.  "Things will be getting rosy soon!  A piece can't be put 
on nowadays without its getting on his nerves."

Bosc shrugged his shoulders; he was above such storms.  Fontan 
whispered:

"He's afraid of a fiasco.  The piece strikes me as idiotic."

Then he turned to Clarisse and again referred to what Rose had been 
telling them:

"D'you believe in the offers of the Folies people, eh?  Three 
hundred francs an evening for a hundred nights!  Why not a country 
house into the bargain?  If his wife were to be given three hundred 
francs Mignon would chuck my friend Bordenave and do it jolly sharp 
too!"

Clarisse was a believer in the three hundred francs.  That man 
Fontan was always picking holes in his friends' successes!  Just 
then Simonne interrupted her.  She was shivering with cold.  Indeed, 
they were all buttoned up to the ears and had comforters on, and 
they looked up at the ray of sunlight which shone brightly above 
them but did not penetrate the cold gloom of the theater.  In the 
streets outside there was a frost under a November sky.

"And there's no fire in the greenroom!" said Simonne.  "It's 
disgusting; he IS just becoming a skinflint!  I want to be off; I 
don't want to get seedy."

"Silence, I say!" Bordenave once more thundered.

Then for a minute or so a confused murmur alone was audible as the 
actors went on repeating their parts.  There was scarcely any 
appropriate action, and they spoke in even tones so as not to tire 
themselves.  Nevertheless, when they did emphasize a particular 
shade of meaning they cast a glance at the house, which lay before 
them like a yawning gulf.  It was suffused with vague, ambient 
shadow, which resembled the fine dust floating pent in some high, 
windowless loft.  The deserted house, whose sole illumination was 
the twilight radiance of the stage, seemed to slumber in melancholy 
and mysterious effacement.  Near the ceiling dense night smothered 
the frescoes, while from the several tiers of stage boxes on either 
hand huge widths of gray canvas stretched down to protect the 
neighboring hangings.  In fact, there was no end to these coverings; 
bands of canvas had been thrown over the velvet-covered ledges in 
front of the various galleries which they shrouded thickly.  Their 
pale hue stained the surrounding shadows, and of the general 
decorations of the house only the dark recesses of the boxes were 
distinguishable.  These served to outline the framework of the 
several stories, where the seats were so many stains of red velvet 
turned black.  The chandelier had been let down as far as it would 
go, and it so filled the region of the stalls with its pendants as 
to suggest a flitting and to set one thinking that the public had 
started on a journey from which they would never return.

Just about then Rose, as the little duchess who has been misled into 
the society of a courtesan, came to the footlights, lifted up her 
hands and pouted adorably at the dark and empty theater, which was 
as sad as a house of mourning.

"Good heavens, what queer people!" she said, emphasizing the phrase 
and confident that it would have its effect.

Far back in the corner box in which she was hiding Nana sat 
enveloped in a great shawl.  She was listening to the play and 
devouring Rose with her eyes.  Turning toward Labordette, she asked 
him in a low tone:

"You are sure he'll come?"

"Quite sure.  Without doubt he'll come with Mignon, so as to have an 
excuse for coming.  As soon as he makes his appearance you'll go up 
into Mathilde's dressing room, and I'll bring him to you there."

They were talking of Count Muffat.  Labordette had arranged this 
interview with him on neutral ground.  He had had a serious talk 
with Bordenave, whose affairs had been gravely damaged by two 
successive failures.  Accordingly Bordenave had hastened to lend him 
his theater and to offer Nana a part, for he was anxious to win the 
count's favor and hoped to be able to borrow from him.

"And this part of Geraldine, what d'you thing of it?" continued 
Labordette.

But Nana sat motionless and vouchsafed no reply.  After the first 
act, in which the author showed how the Duc de Beaurivage played his 
wife false with the blonde Geraldine, a comic-opera celebrity, the 
second act witnessed the Duchess Helene's arrival at the house of 
the actress on the occasion of a masked ball being given by the 
latter.  The duchess has come to find out by what magical process 
ladies of that sort conquer and retain their husbands' affections.  
A cousin, the handsome Oscar de Saint-Firmin, introduces her and 
hopes to be able to debauch her.  And her first lesson causes her 
great surprise, for she hears Geraldine swearing like a hodman at 
the duke, who suffers with most ecstatic submissiveness.  The 
episode causes her to cry out, "Dear me, if that's the way one ought 
to talk to the men!"  Geraldine had scarce any other scene in the 
act save this one.  As to the duchess, she is very soon punished for 
her curiosity, for an old buck, the Baron de Tardiveau, takes her 
for a courtesan and becomes very gallant, while on her other side 
Beaurivage sits on a lounging chair and makes his peace with 
Geraldine by dint of kisses and caresses.  As this last lady's part 
had not yet been assigned to anyone, Father Cossard had got up to 
read it, and he was now figuring away in Bosc's arms and emphasizing 
it despite himself.  At this point, while the rehearsal was dragging 
monotonously on, Fauchery suddenly jumped from his chair.  He had 
restrained himself up to that moment, but now his nerves got the 
better of him.

"That's not it!" he cried.

The actors paused awkwardly enough while Fontan sneered and asked in 
his most contemptuous voice:

"Eh?  What's not it?  Who's not doing it right?"

"Nobody is!  You're quite wrong, quite wrong!" continued Fauchery, 
and, gesticulating wildly, he came striding over the stage and began 
himself to act the scene.

"Now look here, you Fontan, do please comprehend the way Tardiveau 
gets packed off.  You must lean forward like this in order to catch 
hold of the duchess.  And then you, Rose, must change your position 
like that but not too soon--only when you hear the kiss."

He broke off and in the heat of explanation shouted to Cossard:

"Geraldine, give the kiss!  Loudly, so that it may be heard!"

Father Cossard turned toward Bosc and smacked his lips vigorously.

"Good!  That's the kiss," said Fauchery triumphantly.  "Once more; 
let's have it once more.  Now you see, Rose, I've had time to move, 
and then I give a little cry--so: 'Oh, she's given him a kiss.'  But 
before I do that, Tardiveau must go up the stage.  D'you hear, 
Fontan?  You go up.  Come, let's try it again, all together."

The actors continued the scene again, but Fontan played his part 
with such an ill grace that they made no sort of progress.  Twice 
Fauchery had to repeat his explanation, each time acting it out with 
more warmth than before.  The actors listened to him with melancholy 
faces, gazed momentarily at one another, as though he had asked them 
to walk on their heads, and then awkwardly essayed the passage, only 
to pull up short directly afterward, looking as stiff as puppets 
whose strings have just been snapped.

"No, it beats me; I can't understand it," said Fontan at length, 
speaking in the insolent manner peculiar to him.

Bordenave had never once opened his lips.  He had slipped quite down 
in his armchair, so that only the top of his hat was now visible in 
the doubtful flicker of the gaslight on the stand.  His cane had 
fallen from his grasp and lay slantwise across his waistcoat.  
Indeed, he seemed to be asleep.  But suddenly he sat bolt upright.

"It's idiotic, my boy," he announced quietly to Fauchery.

"What d'you mean, idiotic?" cried the author, growing very pale.  
"It's you that are the idiot, my dear boy!"

Bordenave began to get angry at once.  He repeated the word 
"idiotic" and, seeking a more forcible expression, hit upon 
"imbecile" and "damned foolish."  The public would hiss, and the act 
would never be finished!  And when Fauchery, without, indeed, being 
very deeply wounded by these big phrases, which always recurred when 
a new piece was being put on, grew savage and called the other a 
brute, Bordenave went beyond all bounds, brandished his cane in the 
air, snorted like a bull and shouted:

"Good God!  Why the hell can't you shut up?  We've lost a quarter of 
an hour over this folly.  Yes, folly!  There's no sense in it.  And 
it's so simple, after all's said and done!  You, Fontan, mustn't 
move.  You, Rose, must make your little movement, just that, no 
more; d'ye see?  And then you come down.  Now then, let's get it 
done this journey.  Give the kiss, Cossard."

Then ensued confusion.  The scene went no better than before.  
Bordenave, in his turn, showed them how to act it about as 
gracefully as an elephant might have done, while Fauchery sneered 
and shrugged pityingly.  After that Fontan put his word in, and even 
Bosc made so bold as to give advice.  Rose, thoroughly tired out, 
had ended by sitting down on the chair which indicated the door.  No 
one knew where they had got to, and by way of finish to it all 
Simonne made a premature entry, under the impression that her cue 
had been given her, and arrived amid the confusion.  This so enraged 
Bordenave that he whirled his stick round in a terrific manner and 
caught her a sounding thwack to the rearward.  At rehearsal he used 
frequently to drub his former mistress.  Simonne ran away, and this 
furious outcry followed her:

"Take that, and, by God, if I'm annoyed again I shut the whole shop 
up at once!"

Fauchery pushed his hat down over his forehead and pretended to be 
going to leave the theater.  But he stopped at the top of the stage 
and came down again when he saw Bordenave perspiringly resuming his 
seat.  Then he, too, took up his old position in the other armchair.  
For some seconds they sat motionless side by side while oppressive 
silence reigned in the shadowy house.  The actors waited for nearly 
two minutes.  They were all heavy with exhaustion and felt as though 
they had performed an overwhelming task.

"Well, let's go on," said Bordenave at last.  He spoke in his usual 
voice and was perfectly calm.

"Yes, let's go on," Fauchery repeated.  "We'll arrange the scene 
tomorrow."

And with that they dragged on again and rehearsed their parts with 
as much listlessness and as fine an indifference as ever.  During 
the dispute between manager and author Fontan and the rest had been 
taking things very comfortably on the rustic bench and seats at the 
back of the stage, where they had been chuckling, grumbling and 
saying fiercely cutting things.  But when Simonne came back, still 
smarting from her blow and choking with sobs, they grew melodramatic 
and declared that had they been in her place they would have 
strangled the swine.  She began wiping her eyes and nodding 
approval.  It was all over between them, she said.  She was leaving 
him, especially as Steiner had offered to give her a grand start in 
life only the day before.  Clarisse was much astonished at this, for 
the banker was quite ruined, but Prulliere began laughing and 
reminded them of the neat manner in which that confounded Israelite 
had puffed himself alongside of Rose in order to get his Landes 
saltworks afloat on 'change.  Just at that time he was airing a new 
project, namely, a tunnel under the Bosporus.  Simonne listened with 
the greatest interest to this fresh piece of information.

As to Clarisse, she had been raging for a week past.  Just fancy, 
that beast La Faloise, whom she had succeeded in chucking into 
Gaga's venerable embrace, was coming into the fortune of a very rich 
uncle!  It was just her luck; she had always been destined to make 
things cozy for other people.  Then, too, that pig Bordenave had 
once more given her a mere scrap of a part, a paltry fifty lines, 
just as if she could not have played Geraldine!  She was yearning 
for that role and hoping that Nana would refuse it.

"Well, and what about me?" said Prulliere with much bitterness.  "I 
haven't got more than two hundred lines.  I wanted to give the part 
up.  It's too bad to make me play that fellow Saint-Firmin; why, 
it's a regular failure!  And then what a style it's written in, my 
dears!  It'll fall dead flat, you may be sure."

But just then Simonne, who had been chatting with Father Barillot, 
came back breathless and announced:

"By the by, talking of Nana, she's in the house."

"Where, where?" asked Clarisse briskly, getting up to look for her.

The news spread at once, and everyone craned forward.  The rehearsal 
was, as it were, momentarily interrupted.  But Bordenave emerged 
from his quiescent condition, shouting:

"What's up, eh?  Finish the act, I say.  And be quiet out there; 
it's unbearable!"

Nana was still following the piece from the corner box.  Twice 
Labordette showed an inclination to chat, but she grew impatient and 
nudged him to make him keep silent.  The second act was drawing to a 
close, when two shadows loomed at the back of the theater.  They 
were creeping softly down, avoiding all noise, and Nana recognized 
Mignon and Count Muffat.  They came forward and silently shook hands 
with Bordenave.

"Ah, there they are," she murmured with a sigh of relief.

Rose Mignon delivered the last sentences of the act.  Thereupon 
Bordenave said that it was necessary to go through the second again 
before beginning the third.  With that he left off attending to the 
rehearsal and greeted the count with looks of exaggerated 
politeness, while Fauchery pretended to be entirely engrossed with 
his actors, who now grouped themselves round him.  Mignon stood 
whistling carelessly, with his hands behind his back and his eyes 
fixed complacently on his wife, who seemed rather nervous.

"Well, shall we go upstairs?" Labordette asked Nana.  "I'll install 
you in the dressing room and come down again and fetch him."

Nana forthwith left the corner box.  She had to grope her way along 
the passage outside the stalls, but Bordenave guessed where she was 
as she passed along in the dark and caught her up at the end of the 
corridor passing behind the scenes, a narrow tunnel where the gas 
burned day and night.  Here, in order to bluff her into a bargain, 
he plunged into a discussion of the courtesan's part.

"What a part it is, eh?  What a wicked little part!  It's made for 
you.  Come and rehearse tomorrow."

Nana was frigid.  She wanted to know what the third act was like.

"Oh, it's superb, the third act is!  The duchess plays the courtesan 
in her own house and this disgusts Beaurivage and makes him amend 
his way.  Then there's an awfully funny QUID PRO QUO, when Tardiveau 
arrives and is under the impression that he's at an opera dancer's 
house."

"And what does Geraldine do in it all?" interrupted Nana.

"Geraldine?" repeated Bordenave in some embarrassment.  "She has a 
scene--not a very long one, but a great success.  It's made for you, 
I assure you!  Will you sign?"

She looked steadily at him and at length made answer:

"We'll see about that all in good time."

And she rejoined Labordette, who was waiting for her on the stairs.  
Everybody in the theater had recognized her, and there was now much 
whispering, especially between Prulliere, who was scandalized at her 
return, and Clarisse who was very desirous of the part.  As to 
Fontan, he looked coldly on, pretending unconcern, for he did not 
think it becoming to round on a woman he had loved.  Deep down in 
his heart, though, his old love had turned to hate, and he nursed 
the fiercest rancor against her in return for the constant devotion, 
the personal beauty, the life in common, of which his perverse and 
monstrous tastes had made him tire.

In the meantime, when Labordette reappeared and went up to the 
count, Rose Mignon, whose suspicions Nana's presence had excited, 
understood it all forthwith.  Muffat was bothering her to death, but 
she was beside herself at the thought of being left like this.  She 
broke the silence which she usually maintained on such subjects in 
her husband's society and said bluntly:

"You see what's going on?  My word, if she tries the Steiner trick 
on again I'll tear her eyes out!"

Tranquilly and haughtily Mignon shrugged his shoulders, as became a 
man from whom nothing could be hidden.

"Do be quiet," he muttered.  "Do me the favor of being quiet, won't 
you?"

He knew what to rely on now.  He had drained his Muffat dry, and he 
knew that at a sign from Nana he was ready to lie down and be a 
carpet under her feet.  There is no fighting against passions such 
as that.  Accordingly, as he knew what men were, he thought of 
nothing but how to turn the situation to the best possible account.

It would be necessary to wait on the course of events.  And he 
waited on them.

"Rose, it's your turn!" shouted Bordenave.  "The second act's being 
begun again."

"Off with you then," continued Mignon, "and let me arrange matters."

Then he began bantering, despite all his troubles, and was pleased 
to congratulate Fauchery on his piece.  A very strong piece!  Only 
why was his great lady so chaste?  It wasn't natural!  With that he 
sneered and asked who had sat for the portrait of the Duke of 
Beaurivage, Geraldine's wornout roue.  Fauchery smiled; he was far 
from annoyed.  But Bordenave glanced in Muffat's direction and 
looked vexed, and Mignon was struck at this and became serious 
again.

"Let's begin, for God's sake!" yelled the manager.  "Now then, 
Barillot!  Eh?  What?  Isn't Bosc there?  Is he bloody well making 
game of me now?"

Bosc, however, made his appearance quietly enough, and the rehearsal 
began again just as Labordette was taking the count away with him.  
The latter was tremulous at the thought of seeing Nana once more.  
After the rupture had taken place between them there had been a 
great void in his life.  He was idle and fancied himself about to 
suffer through the sudden change his habits had undergone, and 
accordingly he had let them take him to see Rose.  Besides, his 
brain had been in such a whirl that he had striven to forget 
everything and had strenuously kept from seeking out Nana while 
avoiding an explanation with the countess.  He thought, indeed, that 
he owed his dignity such a measure of forgetfulness.  But mysterious 
forces were at work within, and Nana began slowly to reconquer him.  
First came thoughts of her, then fleshly cravings and finally a new 
set of exclusive, tender, well-nigh paternal feelings.

The abominable events attendant on their last interview were 
gradually effacing themselves.  He no longer saw Fontan; he no 
longer heard the stinging taunt about his wife's adultery with which 
Nana cast him out of doors.  These things were as words whose memory 
vanished.  Yet deep down in his heart there was a poignant smart 
which wrung him with such increasing pain that it nigh choked him.  
Childish ideas would occur to him; he imagined that she would never 
have betrayed him if he had really loved her, and he blamed himself 
for this.  His anguish was becoming unbearable; he was really very 
wretched.  His was the pain of an old wound rather than the blind, 
present desire which puts up with everything for the sake of 
immediate possession.  He felt a jealous passion for the woman and 
was haunted by longings for her and her alone, her hair, her mouth, 
her body.  When he remembered the sound of her voice a shiver ran 
through him; he longed for her as a miser might have done, with 
refinements of desire beggaring description.  He was, in fact, so 
dolorously possessed by his passion that when Labordette had begun 
to broach the subject of an assignation he had thrown himself into 
his arms in obedience to irresistible impulse.  Directly afterward 
he had, of course, been ashamed of an act of self-abandonment which 
could not but seem very ridicubus in a man of his position; but 
Labordette was one who knew when to see and when not to see things, 
and he gave a further proof of his tact when he left the count at 
the foot of the stairs and without effort let slip only these simple 
words:

"The right-hand passage on the second floor.  The door's not shut."

Muffat was alone in that silent corner of the house.  As he passed 
before the players' waiting room, he had peeped through the open 
doors and noticed the utter dilapidation of the vast chamber, which 
looked shamefully stained and worn in broad daylight.  But what 
surprised him most as he emerged from the darkness and confusion of 
the stage was the pure, clear light and deep quiet at present 
pervading the lofty staircase, which one evening when he had seen it 
before had been bathed in gas fumes and loud with the footsteps of 
women scampering over the different floors.  He felt that the 
dressing rooms were empty, the corridors deserted; not a soul was 
there; not a sound broke the stillness, while through the square 
windows on the level of the stairs the pale November sunlight 
filtered and cast yellow patches of light, full of dancing dust, 
amid the dead, peaceful air which seemed to descend from the regions 
above.

He was glad of this calm and the silence, and he went slowly up, 
trying to regain breath as he went, for his heart was thumping, and 
he was afraid lest he might behave childishly and give way to sighs 
and tears.  Accordingly on the first-floor landing he leaned up 
against a wall--for he was sure of not being observed--and pressed 
his handkerchief to his mouth and gazed at the warped steps, the 
iron balustrade bright with the friction of many hands, the scraped 
paint on the walls--all the squalor, in fact, which that house of 
tolerance so crudely displayed at the pale afternoon hour when 
courtesans are asleep.  When he reached the second floor he had to 
step over a big yellow cat which was lying curled up on a step.  
With half-closed eyes this cat was keeping solitary watch over the 
house, where the close and now frozen odors which the women nightly 
left behind them had rendered him somnolent.

In the right-hand corridor the door of the dressing room had, 
indeed, not been closed entirely.  Nana was waiting.  That little 
Mathilde, a drab of a young girl, kept her dressing room in a filthy 
state.  Chipped jugs stood about anyhow; the dressing table was 
greasy, and there was a chair covered with red stains, which looked 
as if someone had bled over the straw.  The paper pasted on walls 
and ceiling was splashed from top to bottom with spots of soapy 
water and this smelled so disagreeably of lavender scent turned sour 
that Nana opened the window and for some moments stayed leaning on 
the sill, breathing the fresh air and craning forward to catch sight 
of Mme Bron underneath.  She could hear her broom wildly at work on 
the mildewed pantiles of the narrow court which was buried in 
shadow.  A canary, whose cage hung on a shutter, was trilling away 
piercingly.  The sound of carriages in the boulevard and neighboring 
streets was no longer audible, and the quiet and the wide expanse of 
sleeping sunlight suggested the country.  Looking farther afield, 
her eye fell on the small buildings and glass roofs of the galleries 
in the passage and, beyond these, on the tall houses in the Rue 
Vivienne, the backs of which rose silent and apparently deserted 
over against her.  There was a succession of terrace roofs close by, 
and on one of these a photographer had perched a big cagelike 
construction of blue glass.  It was all very gay, and Nana was 
becoming absorbed in contemplation, when it struck her someone had 
knocked at the door.

She turned round and shouted:

"Come in!"

At sight of the count she shut the window, for it was not warm, and 
there was no need for the eavesdropping Mme Bron to listen.  The 
pair gazed at one another gravely.  Then as the count still kept 
standing stiffly in front of her, looking ready to choke with 
emotion, she burst out laughing and said:

"Well!  So you're here again, you silly big beast!"

The tumult going on within him was so great that he seemed a man 
frozen to ice.  He addressed Nana as "madame" and esteemed himself 
happy to see her again.  Thereupon she became more familiar than 
ever in order to bounce matters through.

"Don't do it in the dignified way!  You wanted to see me, didn't 
you?  But you didn't intend us to stand looking at one another like 
a couple of chinaware dogs.  We've both been in the wrong--Oh, I 
certainly forgive you!"

And herewith they agreed not to talk of that affair again, Muffat 
nodding his assent as Nana spoke.  He was calmer now but as yet 
could find nothing to say, though a thousand things rose 
tumultuously to his lips.  Surprised at his apparent coldness, she 
began acting a part with much vigor.

"Come," she continued with a faint smile, "you're a sensible man!  
Now that we've made our peace let's shake hands and be good friends 
in future."

"What?  Good friends?" he murmured in sudden anxiety.

"Yes; it's idiotic, perhaps, but I should like you to think well of 
me.  We've had our little explanation out, and if we meet again we 
shan't, at any rate look like a pair of boobies."

He tried to interrupt her with a movement of the hand.

"Let me finish!  There's not a man, you understand, able to accuse 
me of doing him a blackguardly turn; well, and it struck me as 
horrid to begin in your case.  We all have our sense of honor, dear 
boy."

"But that's not my meaning!" he shouted violently.  "Sit down--
listen to me!"  And as though he were afraid of seeing her take her 
departure, he pushed her down on the solitary chair in the room.  
Then he paced about in growing agitation.  The little dressing room 
was airless and full of sunlight, and no sound from the outside 
world disturbed its pleasant, peaceful, dampish atmosphere.  In the 
pauses of conversation the shrillings of the canary were alone 
audible and suggested the distant piping of a flute.

"Listen," he said, planting himself in front of her, "I've come to 
possess myself of you again.  Yes, I want to begin again.  You know 
that well; then why do you talk to me as you do?  Answer me; tell me 
you consent."

Her head was bent, and she was scratching the blood-red straw of the 
seat underneath her.  Seeing him so anxious, she did not hurry to 
answer.  But at last she lifted up her face.  It had assumed a grave 
expression, and into the beautiful eyes she had succeeded in 
infusing a look of sadness.

"Oh, it's impossible, little man.  Never, never, will I live with 
you again."

"Why?" he stuttered, and his face seemed contracted in unspeakable 
suffering.

"Why?  Hang it all, because--It's impossible; that's about it.  I 
don't want to."

He looked ardently at her for some seconds longer.  Then his legs 
curved under him and he fell on the floor.  In a bored voice she 
added this simple advice:

"Ah, don't be a baby!"

But he was one already.  Dropping at her feet, he had put his arms 
round her waist and was hugging her closely, pressing his face hard 
against her knees.  When he felt her thus--when he once more divined 
the presence of her velvety limbs beneath the thin fabric of her 
dress--he was suddenly convulsed and trembled, as it were, with 
fever, while madly, savagely, he pressed his face against her knees 
as though he had been anxious to force through her flesh.  The old 
chair creaked, and beneath the low ceiling, where the air was 
pungent with stale perfumes, smothered sobs of desire were audible.

"Well, and after?" Nana began saying, letting him do as he would.  
"All this doesn't help you a bit, seeing that the thing's 
impossible.  Good God, what a child you are!"

His energy subsided, but he still stayed on the floor, nor did he 
relax his hold of her as he said in a broken voice:

"Do at least listen to what I came to offer you.  I've already seen 
a town house close to the Parc Monceau--I would gladly realize your 
smallest wish.  In order to have you all to myself, I would give my 
whole fortune.  Yes, that would be my only condition, that I should 
have you all to myself!  Do you understand?  And if you were to 
consent to be mine only, oh, then I should want you to be the 
loveliest, the richest, woman on earth.  I should give you carriages 
and diamonds and dresses!"

At each successive offer Nana shook her head proudly.  Then seeing 
that he still continued them, that he even spoke of settling money 
on her--for he was at loss what to lay at her feet--she apparently 
lost patience.

"Come, come, have you done bargaining with me?  I'm a good sort, and 
I don't mind giving in to you for a minute or two, as your feelings 
are making you so ill, but I've had enough of it now, haven't I?  So 
let me get up.  You're tiring me."

She extricated herself from his clasp, and once on her feet:

"No, no, no!" she said.  "I don't want to!"

With that he gathered himself up painfully and feebly dropped into a 
chair, in which he leaned back with his face in his hands.  Nana 
began pacing up and down in her turn.  For a second or two she 
looked at the stained wallpaper, the greasy toilet table, the whole 
dirty little room as it basked in the pale sunlight.  Then she 
paused in front of the count and spoke with quiet directness.

"It's strange how rich men fancy they can have everything for their 
money.  Well, and if I don't want to consent--what then?  I don't 
care a pin for your presents!  You might give me Paris, and yet I 
should say no!  Always no!  Look here, it's scarcely clean in this 
room, yet I should think it very nice if I wanted to live in it with 
you.  But one's fit to kick the bucket in your palaces if one isn't 
in love.  Ah, as to money, my poor pet, I can lay my hands on that 
if I want to, but I tell you, I trample on it; I spit on it!"

And with that she assumed a disgusted expression.  Then she became 
sentimental and added in a melancholy tone:

"I know of something worth more than money.  Oh, if only someone 
were to give me what I long for!"

He slowly lifted his head, and there was a gleam of hope in his eyes.

"Oh, you can't give it me," she continued; "it doesn't depend on 
you, and that's the reason I'm talking to you about it.  Yes, we're 
having a chat, so I may as well mention to you that I should like to 
play the part of the respectable woman in that show of theirs."

"What respectable woman?" he muttered in astonishment.

"Why, their Duchess Helene!  If they think I'm going to play 
Geraldine, a part with nothing in it, a scene and nothing besides--
if they think that!  Besides, that isn't the reason.  The fact is 
I've had enough of courtesans.  Why, there's no end to 'em!  They'll 
be fancying I've got 'em on the brain; to be sure they will!  
Besides, when all's said and done, it's annoying, for I can quite 
see they seem to think me uneducated.  Well, my boy, they're jolly 
well in the dark about it, I can tell you!  When I want to be a 
perfect lady, why then I am a swell, and no mistake!  Just look at 
this."

And she withdrew as far as the window and then came swelling back 
with the mincing gait and circumspect air of a portly hen that fears 
to dirty her claws.  As to Muffat, he followed her movements with 
eyes still wet with tears.  He was stupefied by this sudden 
transition from anguish to comedy.  She walked about for a moment or 
two in order the more thoroughly to show off her paces, and as she 
walked she smiled subtlely, closed her eyes demurely and managed her 
skirts with great dexterity.  Then she posted herself in front of 
him again.

"I guess I've hit it, eh?"

"Oh, thoroughly," he stammered with a broken voice and a troubled 
expression.

"I tell you I've got hold of the honest woman!  I've tried at my own 
place.  Nobody's got my little knack of looking like a duchess who 
don't care a damn for the men.  Did you notice it when I passed in 
front of you?  Why, the thing's in my blood!  Besides, I want to 
play the part of an honest woman.  I dream about it day and night--
I'm miserable about it.  I must have the part, d'you hear?"

And with that she grew serious, speaking in a hard voice and looking 
deeply moved, for she was really tortured by her stupid, tiresome 
wish.  Muffat, still smarting from her late refusals, sat on without 
appearing to grasp her meaning.  There was a silence during which 
the very flies abstained from buzzing through the quiet, empty place.

"Now, look here," she resumed bluntly, "you're to get them to give 
me the part."

He was dumfounded, and with a despairing gesture:

"Oh, it's impossible!  You yourself were saying just now that it 
didn't depend on me."

She interrupted him with a shrug of the shoulders.

"You'll just go down, and you'll tell Bordenave you want the part.  
Now don't be such a silly!  Bordenave wants money--well, you'll lend 
him some, since you can afford to make ducks and drakes of it."

And as he still struggled to refuse her, she grew angry.

"Very well, I understand; you're afraid of making Rose angry.  I 
didn't mention the woman when you were crying down on the floor--I 
should have had too much to say about it all.  Yes, to be sure, when 
one has sworn to love a woman forever one doesn't usually take up 
with the first creature that comes by directly after.  Oh, that's 
where the shoe pinches, I remember!  Well, dear boy, there's nothing 
very savory in the Mignon's leavings!  Oughtn't you to have broken 
it off with that dirty lot before coming and squirming on my knees?"

He protested vaguely and at last was able to get out a phrase.

"Oh, I don't care a jot for Rose; I'll give her up at once."

Nana seemed satisfied on this point.  She continued:

"Well then, what's bothering you?  Bordenave's master here.  You'll 
tell me there's Fauchery after Bordenave--"

She had sunk her voice, for she was coming to the delicate part of 
the matter.  Muffat sat silent, his eyes fixed on the ground.  He 
had remained voluntarily ignorant of Fauchery's assiduous attentions 
to the countess, and time had lulled his suspicions and set him 
hoping that he had been deceiving himself during that fearful night 
passed in a doorway of the Rue Taitbout.  But he still felt a dull, 
angry repugnance to the man.

"Well, what then?  Fauchery isn't the devil!" Nana repeated, feeling 
her way cautiously and trying to find out how matters stood between 
husband and lover.  "One can get over his soft side.  I promise you, 
he's a good sort at bottom!  So it's a bargain, eh?  You'll tell him 
that it's for my sake?"

The idea of taking such a step disgusted the count.

"No, no!  Never!" he cried.

She paused, and this sentence was on the verge of utterance:

"Fauchery can refuse you nothing."

But she felt that by way of argument it was rather too much of a 
good thing.  So she only smiled a queer smile which spoke as plainly 
as words.  Muffat had raised his eyes to her and now once more 
lowered them, looking pale and full of embarrassment.

"Ah, you're not good natured," she muttered at last.

"I cannot," he said with a voice and a look of the utmost anguish.  
"I'll do whatever you like, but not that, dear love!  Oh, I beg you 
not to insist on that!"

Thereupon she wasted no more time in discussion but took his head 
between her small hands, pushed it back a little, bent down and 
glued her mouth to his in a long, long kiss.  He shivered violently; 
he trembled beneath her touch; his eyes were closed, and he was 
beside himself.  She lifted him to his feet.

"Go," said she simply.

He walked off, making toward the door.  But as he passed out she 
took him in her arms again, became meek and coaxing, lifted her face 
to his and rubbed her cheek against his waistcoat, much as a cat 
might have done.

"Where's the fine house?" she whispered in laughing embarrassment, 
like a little girl who returns to the pleasant things she has 
previously refused.

"In the Avenue de Villiers."

"And there are carriages there?"

"Yes."

"Lace?  Diamonds?"

"Yes."

"Oh, how good you are, my old pet!  You know it was all jealousy 
just now!  And this time I solemnly promise you it won't be like the 
first, for now you understand what's due to a woman.  You give all, 
don't you?  Well then, I don't want anybody but you!  Why, look 
here, there's some more for you!  There and there AND there!"

When she had pushed him from the room after firing his blood with a 
rain of kisses on hands and on face, she panted awhile.  Good 
heavens, what an unpleasant smell there was in that slut Mathilde's 
dressing room!  It was warm, if you will, with the tranquil warmth 
peculiar to rooms in the south when the winter sun shines into them, 
but really, it smelled far too strong of stale lavender water, not 
to mention other less cleanly things!  She opened the window and, 
again leaning on the window sill, began watching the glass roof of 
the passage below in order to kill time.

Muffat went staggering downstairs.  His head was swimming.  What 
should he say?  How should he broach the matter which, moreover, did 
not concern him?  He heard sounds of quarreling as he reached the 
stage.  The second act was being finished, and Prulliere was beside 
himself with wrath, owing to an attempt on Fauchery's part to cut 
short one of his speeches.

"Cut it all out then," he was shouting.  "I should prefer that!  
Just fancy, I haven't two hundred lines, and they're still cutting 
me down.  No, by Jove, I've had enough of it; I give the part up."

He took a little crumpled manuscript book out of his pocket and 
fingered its leaves feverishly, as though he were just about to 
throw it on Cossard's lap.  His pale face was convulsed by outraged 
vanity; his lips were drawn and thin, his eyes flamed; he was quite 
unable to conceal the struggle that was going on inside him.  To 
think that he, Prulliere, the idol of the public, should play a part 
of only two hundred lines!

"Why not make me bring in letters on a tray?" he continued bitterly.

"Come, come, Prulliere, behave decently," said Bordenave, who was 
anxious to treat him tenderly because of his influence over the 
boxes.  "Don't begin making a fuss.  We'll find some points.  Eh, 
Fauchery, you'll add some points?  In the third act it would even be 
possible to lengthen a scene out."

"Well then, I want the last speech of all," the comedian declared.  
"I certainly deserve to have it."

Fauchery's silence seemed to give consent, and Prulliere, still 
greatly agitated and discontented despite everything, put his part 
back into his pocket.  Bosc and Fontan had appeared profoundly 
indifferent during the course of this explanation.  Let each man 
fight for his own hand, they reflected; the present dispute had 
nothing to do with them; they had no interest therein!  All the 
actors clustered round Fauchery and began questioning him and 
fishing for praise, while Mignon listened to the last of Prulliere's 
complaints without, however, losing sight of Count Muffat, whose 
return he had been on the watch for.

Entering in the half-light, the count had paused at the back of the 
stage, for he hesitated to interrupt the quarrel.  But Bordenave 
caught sight of him and ran forward.

"Aren't they a pretty lot?" he muttered.  "You can have no idea what 
I've got to undergo with that lot, Monsieur le Comte.  Each man's 
vainer than his neighbor, and they're wretched players all the same, 
a scabby lot, always mixed up in some dirty business or other!  Oh, 
they'd be delighted if I were to come to smash.  But I beg pardon--
I'm getting beside myself."

He ceased speaking, and silence reigned while Muffat sought how to 
broach his announcement gently.  But he failed and, in order to get 
out of his difficulty the more quickly, ended by an abrupt 
announcement:

"Nana wants the duchess's part."

Bordenave gave a start and shouted:

"Come now, it's sheer madness!"

Then looking at the count and finding him so pale and so shaken, he 
was calm at once.

"Devil take it!" he said simply.

And with that there ensued a fresh silence.  At bottom he didn't 
care a pin about it.  That great thing Nana playing the duchess 
might possibly prove amusing!  Besides, now that this had happened 
he had Muffat well in his grasp.  Accordingly he was not long in 
coming to a decision, and so he turned round and called out:

"Fauchery!"

The count had been on the point of stopping him.  But Fauchery did 
not hear him, for he had been pinned against the curtain by Fontan 
and was being compelled to listen patiently to the comedian's 
reading of the part of Tardiveau.  Fontan imagined Tardiveau to be a 
native of Marseilles with a dialect, and he imitated the dialect.  
He was repeating whole speeches.  Was that right?  Was this the 
thing?  Apparently he was only submitting ideas to Fauchery of which 
he was himself uncertain, but as the author seemed cold and raised 
various objections, he grew angry at once.

Oh, very well, the moment the spirit of the part escaped him it 
would be better for all concerned that he shouldn't act it at all!

"Fauchery!" shouted Bordenave once more.

Thereupon the young man ran off, delighted to escape from the actor, 
who was wounded not a little by his prompt retreat.

"Don't let's stay here," continued Bordenave.  "Come this way, 
gentlemen."

In order to escape from curious listeners he led them into the 
property room behind the scenes, while Mignon watched their 
disappearance in some surprise.  They went down a few steps and 
entered a square room, whose two windows opened upon the courtyard.  
A faint light stole through the dirty panes and hung wanly under the 
low ceiling.  In pigeonholes and shelves, which filled the whole 
place up, lay a collection of the most varied kind of bric-a-brac.  
Indeed, it suggested an old-clothes shop in the Rue de Lappe in 
process of selling off, so indescribable was the hotchpotch of 
plates, gilt pasteboard cups, old red umbrellas, Italian jars, 
clocks in all styles, platters and inkpots, firearms and squirts, 
which lay chipped and broken and in unrecognizable heaps under a 
layer of dust an inch deep.  An unendurable odor of old iron, rags 
and damp cardboard emanated from the various piles, where the debris 
of forgotten dramas had been collecting for half a century.

"Come in," Bordenave repeated.  "We shall be alone, at any rate."

The count was extremely embarrassed, and he contrived to let the 
manager risk his proposal for him.  Fauchery was astonished.

"Eh?  What?" he asked.

"Just this," said Bordenave finally.  "An idea has occurred to us.  
Now whatever you do, don't jump!  It's most serious.  What do you 
think of Nana for the duchess's part?"

The author was bewildered; then he burst out with:

"Ah no, no!  You're joking, aren't you?  People would laugh far too 
much."

"Well, and it's a point gained already if they do laugh!  Just 
reflect, my dear boy.  The idea pleases Monsieur le Comte very 
much."

In order to keep himself in countenance Muffat had just picked out 
of the dust on a neighboring shelf an object which he did not seem 
to recognize.  It was an eggcup, and its stem had been mended with 
plaster.  He kept hold of it unconsciously and came forward, 
muttering:

"Yes, yes, it would be capital."

Fauchery turned toward him with a brisk, impatient gesture.  The 
count had nothing to do with his piece, and he said decisively:

"Never!  Let Nana play the courtesan as much as she likes, but a 
lady--No, by Jove!"

"You are mistaken, I assure you," rejoined the count, growing 
bolder.  "This very minute she has been playing the part of a pure 
woman for my benefit."

"Where?" queried Fauchery with growing surprise.

"Upstairs in a dressing room.  Yes, she has, indeed, and with such 
distinction!  She's got a way of glancing at you as she goes by you--
something like this, you know!"

And eggcup in hand, he endeavored to imitate Nana, quite forgetting 
his dignity in his frantic desire to convince the others.  Fauchery 
gazed at him in a state of stupefaction.  He understood it all now, 
and his anger had ceased.  The count felt that he was looking at him 
mockingly and pityingly, and he paused with a slight blush on his 
face.

"Egad, it's quite possible!" muttered the author complaisantly.  
"Perhaps she would do very well, only the part's been assigned.  We 
can't take it away from Rose."

"Oh, if that's all the trouble," said Bordenave, "I'll undertake to 
arrange matters."

But presently, seeing them both against him and guessing that 
Bordenave had some secret interest at stake, the young man thought 
to avoid aquiescence by redoubling the violence of his refusal.  The 
consultation was on the verge of being broken up.

"Oh, dear!  No, no!  Even if the part were unassigned I should never 
give it her!  There, is that plain?  Do let me alone; I have no wish 
to ruin my play!"

He lapsed into silent embarrassment.  Bordenave, deeming himself DE 
TROP, went away, but the count remained with bowed head.  He raised 
it with an effort and said in a breaking voice:

"Supposing, my dear fellow, I were to ask this of you as a favor?"

"I cannot, I cannot," Fauchery kept repeating as he writhed to get 
free.

Muffat's voice became harder.

"I pray and beseech you for it!  I want it!"

And with that he fixed his eyes on him.  The young man read menaces 
in that darkling gaze and suddenly gave way with a splutter of 
confused phrases:

"Do what you like--I don't care a pin about it.  Yes, yes, you're 
abusing your power, but you'll see, you'll see!"

At this the embarrassment of both increased.  Fauchery was leaning 
up against a set of shelves and was tapping nervously on the ground 
with his foot.  Muffat seemed busy examining the eggcup, which he 
was still turning round and about.

"It's an eggcup," Bordenave obligingly came and remarked.

"Yes, to be sure!  It's an eggeup," the count repeated.

"Excuse me, you're covered with dust," continued the manager, 
putting the thing back on a shelf.  "If one had to dust every day 
there'd be no end to it, you understand.  But it's hardly clean 
here--a filthy mess, eh?  Yet you may believe me or not when I tell 
you there's money in it.  Now look, just look at all that!"

He walked Muffat round in front of the pigeonholes and shelves and 
in the greenish light which filtered through the courtyard, told him 
the names of different properties, for he was anxious to interest 
him in his marine-stores inventory, as he jocosely termed it.

Presently, when they had returned into Fauchery's neighborhood, he 
said carelessly enough:

"Listen, since we're all of one mind, we'll finish the matter at 
once.  Here's Mignon, just when he's wanted."

For some little time past Mignon had been prowling in the adjoining 
passage, and the very moment Bordenave began talking of a 
modification of their agreement he burst into wrathful protest.  It 
was infamous--they wanted to spoil his wife's career--he'd go to law 
about it!  Bordenave, meanwhile, was extremely calm and full of 
reasons.  He did not think the part worthy of Rose, and he preferred 
to reserve her for an operetta, which was to be put on after the 
Petite Duchesse.  But when her husband still continued shouting he 
suddenly offered to cancel their arrangement in view of the offers 
which the Folies-Dramatiques had been making the singer.  At this 
Mignon was momenrarily put out, so without denying the truth of 
these offers he loudly professed a vast disdain for money.  His 
wife, he said, had been engaged to play the Duchess Helene, and she 
would play the part even if he, Mignon, were to be ruined over it.  
His dignity, his honor, were at stake!  Starting from this basis, 
the discussion grew interminable.  The manager, however, always 
returned to the following argument: since the Folies had offered 
Rose three hundred francs a night during a hundred performances, and 
since she only made a hundred and fifty with him, she would be the 
gainer by fifteen thousand francs the moment he let her depart.  The 
husband, on his part, did not desert the artist's position.  What 
would people say if they saw his wife deprived of her part?  Why, 
that she was not equal to it; that it had been deemed necessary to 
find a substitute for her!  And this would do great harm to Rose's 
reputation as an artist; nay, it would diminish it.  Oh no, no!  
Glory before gain!  Then without a word of warning he pointed out a 
possible arrangement: Rose, according to the terms of her agreement, 
was pledged to pay a forfeit of ten thousand francs in case she gave 
up the part.  Very well then, let them give her ten thousand francs, 
and she would go to the Folies-Dramatiques.  Bordenave was utterly 
dumfounded while Mignon, who had never once taken his eyes off the 
count, tranquilly awaited results.

"Then everything can be settled," murmured Muffat in tones of 
relief; "we can come to an understanding."

"The deuce, no!  That would be too stupid!" cried Bordenave, 
mastered by his commercial instincts.  "Ten thousand francs to let 
Rose go!  Why, people would make game of me!"

But the count, with a multiplicity of nods, bade him accept.  He 
hesitated, and at last with much grumbling and infinite regret over 
the ten thousand francs which, by the by, were not destined to come 
out of his own pocket he bluntly continued:

"After all, I consent.  At any rate, I shall have you off my hands."

For a quarter of an hour past Fontan had been listening in the 
courtyard.  Such had been his curiosity that he had come down and 
posted himself there, but the moment he understood the state of the 
case he went upstairs again and enjoyed the treat of telling Rose.  
Dear me!  They were just haggling in her behalf!  He dinned his 
words into her ears; she ran off to the property room.  They were 
silent as she entered.  She looked at the four men.  Muffat hung his 
head; Fauchery answered her questioning glance with a despairing 
shrug of the shoulders; as to Mignon, he was busy discussing the 
terms of the agreement with Bordenave.

"What's up?" she demanded curtly.

"Nothing," said her husband.  "Bordenave here is giving ten thousand 
francs in order to get you to give up your part."

She grew tremulous with anger and very pale, and she clenched her 
little fists.  For some moments she stared at him, her whole nature 
in revolt.  Ordinarily in matters of business she was wont to trust 
everything obediently to her husband, leaving him to sign agreements 
with managers and lovers.  Now she could but cry:

"Oh, come, you're too base for anything!"

The words fell like a lash.  Then she sped away, and Mignon, in 
utter astonishment, ran after her.  What next?  Was she going mad?  
He began explaining to her in low tones that ten thousand francs 
from one party and fifteen thousand from the other came to twenty-
five thousand.  A splendid deal!  Muffat was getting rid of her in 
every sense of the word; it was a pretty trick to have plucked him 
of this last feather!  But Rose in her anger vouchsafed no answer.  
Whereupon Mignon in disdain left her to her feminine spite and, 
turning to Bordenave, who was once more on the stage with Fauchery 
and Muffat, said:

"We'll sign tomorrow morning.  Have the money in readiness."

At this moment Nana, to whom Labordette had brought the news, came 
down to the stage in triumph.  She was quite the honest woman now 
and wore a most distinguished expression in order to overwhelm her 
friends and prove to the idiots that when she chose she could give 
them all points in the matter of smartness.  But she nearly got into 
trouble, for at the sight of her Rose darted forward, choking with 
rage and stuttering:

"Yes, you, I'll pay you out!  Things can't go on like this; d'you 
understand?"  Nana forgot herself in face of this brisk attack and 
was going to put her arms akimbo and give her what for.  But she 
controlled herself and, looking like a marquise who is afraid of 
treading on an orange peel, fluted in still more silvery tones.

"Eh, what?" said she.  "You're mad, my dear!"

And with that she continued in her graceful affectation while Rose 
took her departure, followed by Mignon, who now refused to recognize 
her.  Clarisse was enraptured, having just obtained the part of 
Geraldine from Bordenave.  Fauchery, on the other hand, was gloomy; 
he shifted from one foot to the other; he could not decide whether 
to leave the theater or no.  His piece was bedeviled, and he was 
seeking how best to save it.  But Nana came up, took him by both 
hands and, drawing him toward her, asked whether he thought her so 
very atrocious after all.  She wasn't going to eat his play--not 
she!  Then she made him laugh and gave him to understand that he 
would be foolish to be angry with her, in view of his relationship 
to the Muffats.  If, she said, her memory failed her she would take 
her lines from the prompter.  The house, too, would be packed in 
such a way as to ensure applause.  Besides, he was mistaken about 
her, and he would soon see how she would rattle through her part.  
By and by it was arranged that the author should make a few changes 
in the role of the duchess so as to extend that of Prulliere.  The 
last-named personage was enraptured.  Indeed, amid all the joy which 
Nana now quite naturally diffused, Fontan alone remained unmoved.  
In the middle of the yellow lamplight, against which the sharp 
outline offa, there were twenty thousand francs' worth of POINT 
DE VENISE lace.  The furniture was lacquered blue and white under 
designs in silver filigree, and everywhere lay such numbers of white 
bearskins that they hid the carpet.  This was a luxurious caprice on 
Nana's part, she having never been able to break herself of the 
habit of sitting on the floor to take her stockings off.  Next door 
to the bedroom the little saloon was full of an amusing medley of 
exquisitely artistic objects.  Against the hangings of pale rose-
colored silk--a faded Turkish rose color, embroidered with gold 
thread--a whole world of them stood sharply outlined.  They were 
from every land and in every possible style.  There were Italian 
cabinets, Spanish and Portuguese coffers, models of Chinese pagodas, 
a Japanese screen of precious workmanship, besides china, bronzes, 
embroidered silks,  his goatlike profile shone out with great distinctness, 
he stood showing off his figure and affecting the pose of one who 
has been cruelly abandoned.  Nana went quietly up and shook hands 
with him.

"How are you getting on?"

"Oh, pretty fairly.  And how are you?"

"Very well, thank you."

That was all.  They seemed to have only parted at the doors of the 
theater the day before.  Meanwhile the players were waiting about, 
but Bordenave said that the third act would not be rehearsed.  And 
so it chanced that old Bosc went grumbling away at the proper time, 
whereas usually the company were needlessly detained and lost whole 
afternoons in consequence.  Everyone went off.  Down on the pavement 
they were blinded by the broad daylight and stood blinking their 
eyes in a dazed sort of way, as became people who had passed three 
hours squabbling with tight-strung nerves in the depths of a cellar.  
The count, with racked limbs and vacant brain, got into a conveyance 
with Nana, while Labordette took Fauchery off and comforted him.

A month later the first night of the Petite Duchesse proved 
supremely disastrous to Nana.  She was atrociously bad and displayed 
such pretentions toward high comedy that the public grew mirthful.  
They did not hiss--they were too amused.  From a stage box Rose 
Mignon kept greeting her rival's successive entrances with a shrill 
laugh, which set the whole house off.  It was the beginning of her 
revenge.  Accordingly, when at night Nana, greatly chagrined, found 
herself alone with Muffat, she said furiously:

"What a conspiracy, eh?  It's all owing to jealousy.  Oh, if they 
only knew how I despise 'em!  What do I want them for nowadays?  
Look here!  I'll bet a hundred louis that I'll bring all those who 
made fun today and make 'em lick the ground at my feet!  Yes, I'll 
fine-lady your Paris for you, I will!"



CHAPTER X


Thereupon Nana became a smart woman, mistress of all that is foolish 
and filthy in man, marquise in the ranks of her calling.  It was a 
sudden but decisive start, a plunge into the garish day of gallant 
notoriety and mad expenditure and that daredevil wastefulness 
peculiar to beauty.  She at once became queen among the most 
expensive of her kind.  Her photographs were displayed in 
shopwindows, and she was mentioned in the papers.  When she drove in 
her carriage along the boulevards the people would turn and tell one 
another who that was with all the unction of a nation saluting its 
sovereign, while the object of their adoration lolled easily back in 
her diaphanous dresses and smiled gaily under the rain of little 
golden curls which ran riot above the blue of her made-up eyes and 
the red of her painted lips.  And the wonder of wonders was that the 
great creature, who was so awkward on the stage, so very absurd the 
moment she sought to act the chaste woman, was able without effort 
to assume the role of an enchantress in the outer world.  Her 
movements were lithe as a serpent's, and the studied and yet 
seemingly involuntary carelessness with which she dressed was really 
exquisite in its elegance.  There was a nervous distinction in all 
she did which suggested a wellborn Persian cat; she was an 
aristocrat in vice and proudly and rebelliously trampled upon a 
prostrate Paris like a sovereign whom none dare disobey.  She set 
the fashion, and great ladies imitated her.

Nana's fine house was situated at the hangingscorner of the Rue Cardinet, in 
the Avenue de Villiers.  The avenue was part of the luxurious 
quarter at that time springing up in the vague district which had 
once been the Plaine Monceau.  The house had been built by a young 
painter, who was intoxicated by a first success, and had been 
perforce resold almost as soon as it was habitable.  It was in the 
palatial Renaissance manner and had fantastic interior arrangements 
which consisted of modern conveniences framed in a setting of 
somewhat artificial originality.  Count Muffat had bought the house 
ready furnished and full of hosts of beautiful objects--lovely 
Eastern hangings, old credences, huge chairs of the Louis XIII 
epoch.  And thus Nana had come into artistic surroundings of the 
choicest kind and of the most extravagantly various dates.  But 
since the studio, which occupied the central portion of the house, 
could not be of any use to her, she had upset existing arrangements, 
establishing a small drawing room on the first floor, next to her 
bedroom and dressing room, and leaving a conservatory, a large 
drawing room and a dining room to look after themselves underneath.  
She astonished the architect with her ideas, for, as became a 
Parisian workgirl who understands the elegancies of life by 
instinct, she had suddenly developed a very pretty taste for every 
species of luxurious refinement.  Indeed, she did not spoil her 
house overmuch; nay, she even added to the richness of the 
furniture, save here and there, where certain traces of tender 
foolishness and vulgar magnificence betrayed the ex-flower seller 
who had been wont to dream in front of shopwindows in the arcades.

A carpet was spread on the steps beneath the great awning over the 
front door in the court, and the moment you entered the hall you 
were greeted by a perfume as of violets and a soft, warm atmosphere 
which thick hangings helped to produce.  A window, whose yellow- and 
rose-colored panes suggested the warm pallor of human flesh, gave 
light to the wide staircase, at the foot of which a Negro in carved 
wood held out a silver tray full of visiting cards and four white 
marble women, with bosoms displayed, raised lamps in their uplifted 
hands.  Bronzes and Chinese vases full of flowers, divans covered 
with old Persian rugs, armchairs upholstered in old tapestry, 
furnished the entrance hall, adorned the stairheads and gave the 
first-floor landing the appearance of an anteroom.  Here men's 
overcoats and hats were always in evidence, and there were thick 
hangings which deadened every sound.  It seemed a place apart: on 
entering it you might have fancied yourself in a chapel, whose very 
air was thrilling with devotion, whose very silence and seclusion 
were fraught with mystery.

Nana only opened the large and somewhat too-sumptuous Louis XVI 
drawing room on those gala nights when she received society from the 
Tuileries or strangers of distinction.  Ordinarily she only came 
downstairs at mealtimes, and she woul of the finest needlework.  Armchairs 
wide as beds and sofas deep as alcoves suggested voluptuous idleness 
and the somnolent life of the seraglio.  The prevailing tone of the 
room was old gold blended with green and red, and nothing it 
contained too forcibly indicated the presence of the courtesan save 
the luxuriousness of the seats.  Only two "biscuit" statuettes, a 
woman in her shift, hunting for fleas, and another with nothing at 
all on, walking on her hands and waving her feet in the air, 
sufficed to sully the room with a note of stupid originality.

Through a door, which was nearly always ajar, the dressing room was 
visible.  It was all in marble and glass with a white bath, silver 
jugs and basins and crystal and ivory appointments.  A drawn curtain 
filled the place with a clear twilight which seemed to slumber in 
the warm scent of violets, that suggestive perfume peculiar to Nana 
wherewith the whole house, from the roof to the very courtyard, was 
penetrated.

The furnishing of the house was a most important undertaking.  Nana 
certainly had Zoe with her, that girl so devoted to her fortunes.  
For months she had been tranquilly awaiting this abrupt, new 
departure, as became a woman who was certain of her powers of 
prescience, and now she was triumphant; she was mistress of the 
house and was putting by a round sum while serving Madame as 
honestly as possible.  But a solitary lady's maid wasd feel rather lost on such days 
as she lunched by herself in the lofty dining room with its Gobelin 
tapestry and its monumental sideboard, adorned with old porcelain 
and marvelous pieces of ancient plate.  She used to go upstairs 
again as quickly as possible, for her home was on the first floor, 
in the three rooms, the bed, dressing and small drawing room above 
described.  Twice already she had done the bedchamber up anew: on 
the first occasion in mauve satin, on the second in blue silk under 
lace.  But she had not been satisfied with this; it had struck her 
as "nohowish," and she was still unsuccessfully seeking for new 
colors and designs.  On the elaborately upholstered bed, which was 
as low as a so no longer 
sufficient.  A butler, a coachman, a porter and a cook were wanted.  
Besides, it was necessary to fill the stables.  It was then that 
Labordette made himself most useful.  He undertook to perform all 
sorts of errands which bored the count; he made a comfortable job of 
the purchase of horses; he visited the coachbuilders; he guided the 
young woman in her choice of things.  She was to be met with at the 
shops, leaning on his arm.  Labordette even got in the servants--
Charles, a great, tall coachman, who had been in service with the 
Duc de Corbreuse; Julien, a little, smiling, much-becurled butler, 
and a married couple, of whom the wife Victorine became cook while 
the husband Francois was taken on as porter and footman.  The last 
mentioned in powder and breeches wore Nana's livery, which was a 
sky-blue one adorned with silver lace, and he received visitors in 
the hall.  The whole thing was princely in the correctness of its 
style.

At the end of two months the house was set going.  The cost had been 
more than three hundred thousand francs.  There were eight horses in 
the stables, and five carriages in the coach houses, and of these 
five one was a landau with silver embellishments, which for the 
moment occupied the attention of all Paris.  And amid this great 
wealth Nana began settling down and making her nest.  After the 
third representation of the Petite Duchesse she had quitted the 
theater, leaving Bordenave to struggle on against a bankruptcy 
which, despite the count's money, was imminent.  Nevertheless, she 
was still bitter about her failure.  It added to that other 
bitterness, the lesson Fontan had given her, a shameful lesson for 
which she held all men responsible.  Accordingly she now declared 
herself very firm and quite proof against sudden infatuations, but 
thoughts of vengeance took no hold of her volatile brain.  What did 
maintain a hold on it in the hours when she was not indignant was an 
ever-wakeful lust of expenditure, added to a natural contempt for 
the man who paid and to a perpetual passion for consumption and 
waste, which took pride in the ruin of her lovers.

At starting Nana put the count on a proper footing and clearly 
mapped out the conditions of their relationship.  The count gave 
twelve thousand francs monthly, presents excepted, and demanded 
nothing in return save absolute fidelity.  She swore fidelity but 
insisted also on being treated with the utmost consideration, on 
enjoying complete liberty as mistress of the house and on having her 
every wish respected.  For instance, she was to receive her friends 
every day, and he was to come only at stated times.  In a word, he 
was to repose a blind confidence in her in everything.  And when he 
was seized with jealous anxiety and hesitated to grant what she 
wanted, she stood on her dignity and threatened to give him back all 
he had given or even swore by little Louiset to perform what she 
promised.  This was to suffice him.  There was no love where mutual 
esteem was wanting.  At the end of the first month Muffat respected 
her.

But she desired and obtained still more.  Soon she began to 
influence him, as became a good-natured courtesan.  When he came to 
her in a moody condition she cheered him up, confessed him and then 
gave him good advice.  Little by little she interested herself in 
the annoyanceut of 
the troubled waters.

One morning when Muffat had not yet left the bedroom Zoe ushered a 
gentleman into the dressing room, where Nana was changing her 
underwear.  He was trembling violently.

"Good gracious!  It's Zizi!" said the young woman in great 
astonishment.

It was, indeed, Georges.  But when he saw her in her shift, with her 
golden hair over her bare shoulders, he threw his arms round her 
neck and round her waist and kissed her in all directions.  She 
began struggling to get free, for she was frightened, and in 
smothered tones she stammered:

"Do leave off!  He's there!  Oh, it's silly of you!  And you, Zoe, 
are you out of your senses?  Take him away and keep him downstairs; 
I'll try and come down."

Zoe had to push him in front of her.  When Nana was able to rejoin 
them in the drawing room downstairs she scolded them both, and Zoe 
pursed up her lips and took her departure with a vexed expression, 
remarking that she had only been anxious to give Madame a pleasure.  
Georges was so glad to see Nana again and gazed at her with such 
delight that his fine eyes began filling with tears.  The miserable 
days were over now; his mother believed him to have grown reasonable 
and had allowed him to leave Les Fondettes.  Accordingly, the moment 
he had reached the terminus, he had got a conveyance in order the 
more quickly to come and kiss his sweet darling.  He spoke of living 
at her sids of his home life, in his wife, in his daughter, in 
his love affairs and financial difficulties; she was very sensible, 
very fair and right-minded.  On one occasion only did she let anger 
get the better of her, and that was when he confided to her that 
doubtless Daguenet was going to ask for his daughter Estelle in 
marriage.  When the count began making himself notorious Daguenet 
had thought it a wise move to break off with Nana.  He had treated 
her like a base hussy and had sworn to snatch his future father-in-
law out of the creature's clutches.  In return Nana abused her old 
Mimi in a charming fashion.  He was a renegade who had devoured his 
fortune in the company of vile women; he had no moral sense.  True, 
he did not let them pay him money, but he profited by that of others 
and only repaid them at rare intervals with a bouquet or a dinner.  
And when the count seemed inclined to find excuses for these 
failings she bluntly informed him that Daguenet had enjoyed her 
favors, and she added disgusting particulars.  Muffat had grown 
ashen-pale.  There was no question of the young man now.  This would 
teach him to be lacking in gratitude!

Meanwhile the house had not been entirely furnished, when one 
evening after she had lavished the most energetic promises of 
fidelity on Muffat Nana kept the Count Xavier de Vandeuvres for the 
night.  For the last fortnight he had been paying her assiduous 
court, visiting her and sending presents of flowers, and now she 
gave way not so much out of sudden infatuation as to prove that she 
was a free woman.  The idea of gain followed later when, the day 
after, Vandeuvres helped her to pay a bill which she did not wish to 
mention to the other man.  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.  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.  He, too, accepted Nana's conditions, leaving her 
entire freedom of action and claiming her caresses only on certain 
days.  He was not even naively impassioned enough to require her to 
make vows.  Muffat suspected nothing.  As to Vandeuvres, he knew 
things would take place for a certainty, but he never made the least 
allusion to them and pretended total ignorance, while his lips wore 
the subtle smile of the skeptical man of pleasure who does not seek 
the impossible, provided he can have his day and that Paris is aware 
of it.

From that time forth Nana's house was really properly appointed.  
The staff of servants was complete in the stable, in the kitchen and 
in my lady's chamber.  Zoe organized everything and passed 
successfully through the most unforeseen difficulties.  The 
household moved as easily as the scenery in a theater and was 
regulated like a grand administrative concern.  Indeed, it worked 
with such precision that during the early months there were no jars 
and no derangements.  Madame, however, pained Zoe extremely with her 
imprudent acts, her sudden fits of unwisdom, her mad bravado.  Still 
the lady's maid grew gradually lenient, for she had noticed that she 
made increased profits in seasons of wanton waste when Madame had 
committed a folly which must be made up for.  It was then that the 
presents began raining on her, and she fished up many a louis oe in future, as he used to do down in
the country when he 
waited for her, barefooted, in the bedroom at La Mignotte.  And as 
he told her about himself, he let his fingers creep forward, for he 
longed to touch her after that cruel year of separation.  Then he 
got possession of her hands, felt about the wide sleeves of her 
dressing jacket, traveled up as far as her shoulders.

"You still love your baby?" he asked in his child voice.

"Oh, I certainly love him!" answered Nana, briskly getting out of 
his clutches.  "But you come popping in without warning.  You know, 
my little man, I'm not my own mistress; you must be good!"

Georges, when he got out of his cab, had been so dizzy with the 
feeling that his long desire was at last about to be satisfied that 
he had not even noticed what sort of house he was entering.  But now 
he became conscious of a change in the things around him.  He 
examined the sumptuous dining room with its lofty decorated ceiling, 
its Gobelin hangings, its buffet blazing with plate.

"Yes, yes!" he remarked sadly.

And with that she made him understand that he was never to come in 
the mornings but between four and six in the afternoon, if he cared 
to.  That was her reception time.  Then as he looked at her with 
suppliant, questioning eyes and craved no boon at all, she, in her 
turn, kissed him on the forehead in the most amiable way.

"Be very good," she whispered.  "I'll do all I can."

But the truth was that this remark now meant nothing.  She thought 
Georges very nice and would have liked him as a companion, but as 
nothing else.  Nevertheless, when he arrived daily at four o'clock 
he seemed so wretched that she was often fain to be as compliant as 
of old and would hide him in cupboards and constantly allow him to 
pick up the crumbs from Beauty's table.  He hardly ever left the 
house now and became as much one of its inmates as the little dog 
Bijou.  Together they nestled among Mistress's skirts and enjoyed a 
little of her at a time, even when she was with another man, while 
doles of sugar and stray caresses not seldom fell to their share in 
her hours of loneliness and boredom.

Doubtless Mme Hugon found out that the lad had again returned to 
that wicked woman's arms, for she hurried up to Paris and came and 
sought aid from her other son, the Lieutenant Philippe, who was then 
in garrison at Vincennes.  Georges, who was hiding from his elder 
brother, was seized with despairing apprehension, for he feared the 
latter might adopt violent tactics, and as his tenderness for Nana 
was so nervously expansive that he could not keep anything from her, 
he soon began talking of nothing but his big brother, a great, 
strong fellow, who was capable of all kinds of things.

"You know," he explained, "Mamma won't come to you while she can 
send my brother.  Oh, she'll certainly send Philippe to fetch me."

The first time he said this Nana was deeply wounded.  She said 
frigidly:

"Gracious me, I should like to see him come!  For all that he's a 
lieutenant in the army, Francois will chuck him out in double-quick 
time!"

Soon, as the lad kept returning to the subject of his brother, she 
ended by taking a certain interest in Philippe, and in a week's time 
she knew him from head to foot--knew him as very tall and very 
strong and merry and somewhat rough.  She learned intimate details, 
too, and found out that he had hair on his arms and a birthmark on 
his shoulder.  So thoroughly did she learn her lesson that one day, 
when she was full of the image of the man who was to be turned out 
of doors by her orders, she cried out:

"I say, Zizi, your brother's not coming.  He's a base deserter!"

The next day, when Georges and Nana were alone together, Francois 
came upstairs to ask whether Madame would receive Lieutenant 
Philippe Hugon.  Georges grew extremely white and murmured:

"I suspected it; Mamma was talking about it this morning."

And he besought the young woman to send down word that she could not 
see visitors.  But she was already on her feet and seemed all aflame 
as she said:

"Why should I not see him?  He would think me afraid.  Dear me, 
we'll have a good laugh!  Just leave the gentleman in the drawing 
room for a quarter of an hour, Francois; afterward bring him up to 
me."

She did not sit down again but began pacing feverishly to and fro 
between the fireplace and a Venetian mirror hanging above an Italian 
chest.  And each time she reached the latter she glanced at the 
glass and tried the effect of a smile, while Georges sat nervously 
on a sofa, trembling at the thought of the coming scene.  As she 
walked up and down she kept jerking out such little phrases as:

"It will calm the fellow down if he has to wait a quarter of an 
hour.  Besides, if he thinks he's calling on a tottie the drawing 
room will stun him!  Yes, yes, have a good look at everything, my 
fine fellow!  It isn't imitation, and it'll teach you to respect the 
lady who owns it.  Respect's what men need to feel!  The quarter of 
an hour's gone by, eh?  No?  Only ten minutes?  Oh, we've got plenty 
of time."

She did not stay where she was, however.  At the end of the quarter 
of an hour she sent Georges away after making him solemnly promise 
not to listen at the door, as such conduct would scarcely look 
proper in case the servants saw him.  As he went into her bedroom 
Zizi ventured in a choking sort of way to remark:

"It's my brother, you know--"

"Don't you fear," she said with much dignity; "if he's polite I'll 
be polite."

Francois ushered in Philippe Hugon, who wore morning dress.  Georges 
began crossing on tiptoe on the other side of the room, for he was 
anxious to obey the young woman.  But the sound of voices retained 
him, and he hesitated in such anguish of mind that his knees gave 
way under him.  He began imagining that a dread catastrophe would 
befall, that blows would be struck, that something abominable would 
happen, which would make Nana everlastingly odious to him.  And so 
he could not withstand the temptation to come back and put his ear 
against the door.  He heard very ill, for the thick portieres 
deadened every sound, but he managed to catch certain words spoken 
by Philippe, stern phrases in which such terms as "mere child," 
"family," "honor," were distinctly audible.  He was so anxious about 
his darling's possible answers that his heart beat violently and 
filled his head with a confused, buzzing noise.  She was sure to 
give vent to a "Dirty blackguard!" or to a "Leave me bloody well 
alone!  I'm in my own house!"  But nothing happened--not a breath 
came from her direction.  Nana seemed dead in there!  Soon even his 
brother's voice grew gentler, and he could not make it out at all, 
when a strange murmuring sound finally stupefied him.  Nana was 
sobbing!  For a moment or two he was the prey of contending feelings 
and knew not whether to run away or to fall upon Philippe.  But just 
then Zoe came into the room, and he withdrew from the door, ashamed 
at being thus surprised.

She began quietly to put some linen away in a cupboard while he 
stood mute and motionless, pressing his forehead against a 
windowpane.  He was tortured by uncertainty.  After a short silence 
the woman asked:

"It's your brother that's with Madame?"

"Yes," replied the lad in a choking voice.

There was a fresh silence.

"And it makes you anxious, doesn't it, Monsieur Georges?"

"Yes," he rejoined in the same painful, suffering tone.

Zoe was in no hurry.  She folded up some lace and said slowly:

"You're wrong; Madame will manage it all."

And then the conversation ended; they said not another word.  Still 
she did not leave the room.  A long quarter of an hour passed, and 
she turned round again without seeming to notice the look of 
exasperation overspreading the lad's face, which was already white 
with the effects of uncertainty and constraint.  He was casting 
sidelong glances in the direction of the drawing room.

Maybe Nana was still crying.  The other must have grown savage and 
have dealt her blows.  Thus when Zoe finally took her departure he 
ran to the door and once more pressed his ear against it.  He was 
thunderstruck; his head swam, for he heard a brisk outburst of 
gaiety, tender, whispering voices and the smothered giggles of a 
woman who is being tickled.  Besides, almost directly afterward, 
Nana conducted Philippe to the head of the stairs, and there was an 
exchange of cordial and familiar phrases.

When Georges again ventured into the drawing room the young woman 
was standing before the mirror, looking at herself.

"Well?" he asked in utter bewilderment.

"Well, what?" she said without turning round.  Then negligently:

"What did you mean?  He's very nice, is your brother!"

"So it's all right, is it?"

"Oh, certainly it's all right!  Goodness me, what's come over you?  
One would have thought we were going to fight!"

Georges still failed to understand.

"I thought I heard--that is, you didn't cry?" he stammered out.

"Me cry!" she exclaimed, looking fixedly at him.  "Why, you're 
dreaming!  What makes you think I cried?"

Thereupon the lad was treated to a distressing scene for having 
disobeyed and played Paul Pry behind the door.  She sulked, and he 
returned with coaxing submissiveness to the old subject, for he 
wished to know all about it.

"And my brother then?"

"Your brother saw where he was at once.  You know, I might have been 
a tottie, in which case his interference would have been accounted 
for by your age and the family honor!  Oh yes, I understand those 
kinds of feelings!  But a single glance was enough for him, and he 
behaved like a well-bred man at once.  So don't be anxious any 
longer.  It's all over--he's gone to quiet your mamma!"

And she went on laughingly:

"For that matter, you'll see your brother here.  I've invited him, 
and he's going to return."

"Oh, he's going to return," said the lad, growing white.  He added 
nothing, and they ceased talking of Philippe.  She began dressing to 
go out, and he watched her with his great, sad eyes.  Doubtless he 
was very glad that matters had got settled, for he would have 
preferred death to a rupture of their connection, but deep down in 
his heart there was a silent anguish, a profound sense of pain, 
which he had no experience of and dared not talk about.  How 
Philippe quieted their mother's fears he never knew, but three days 
later she returned to Les Fondettes, apparently satisfied.  On the 
evening of her return, at Nana's house, he trembled when Francois 
announced the lieutenant, but the latter jested gaily and treated 
him like a young rascal, whose escapade he had favored as something 
not likely to have any consequences.  The lad's heart was sore 
within him; he scarcely dared move and blushed girlishly at the 
least word that was spoken to him.  He had not lived much in 
Philippe's society; he was ten years his junior, and he feared him 
as he would a father, from whom stories about women are concealed.  
Accordingly he experienced an uneasy sense of shame when he saw him 
so free in Nana's company and heard him laugh uproariously, as 
became a man who was plunging into a life of pleasure with the gusto 
born of magnificent health.  Nevertheless, when his brother shortly 
began to present himself every day, Georges ended by getting 
somewhat used to it all.  Nana was radiant.

This, her latest installation, had been involving all the riotous 
waste attendant on the life of gallantry, and now her housewarming 
was being defiantly celebrated in a grand mansion positively 
overflowing with males and with furniture.

One afternoon when the Hugons were there Count Muffat arrived out of 
hours.  But when Zoe told him that Madame was with friends he 
refused to come in and took his departure discreetly, as became a 
gallant gentleman.  When he made his appearance again in the evening 
Nana received him with the frigid indignation of a grossly affronted 
woman.

"Sir," she said, "I have given you no cause why you should insult 
me.  You must understand this: when I am at home to visitors, I beg 
you to make your appearance just like other people."

The count simply gaped in astonishment.  "But, my dear--" he 
endeavored to explain.

"Perhaps it was because I had visitors!  Yes, there were men here, 
but what d'you suppose I was doing with those men?  You only 
advertise a woman's affairs when you act the discreet lover, and I 
don't want to be advertised; I don't!"

He obtained his pardon with difficulty, but at bottom he was 
enchanted.  It was with scenes such as these that she kept him in 
unquestioning and docile submission.  She had long since succeeded 
in imposing Georges on him as a young vagabond who, she declared, 
amused her.  She made him dine with Philippe, and the count behaved 
with great amiability.  When they rose from table he took the young 
man on one side and asked news of his mother.  From that time forth 
the young Hugons, Vandeuvres and Muffat were openly about the house 
and shook hands as guests and intimates might have done.  It was a 
more convenient arrangement than the previous one.  Muffat alone 
still abstained discreetly from too-frequent visits, thus adhering 
to the ceremonious policy of an ordinary strange caller.  At night 
when Nana was sitting on her bearskins drawing off her stockings, he 
would talk amicably about the other three gentlemen and lay especial 
stress on Philippe, who was loyalty itself.

"It's very true; they're nice," Nana would say as she lingered on 
the floor to change her shift.  "Only, you know, they see what I am.  
One word about it and I should chuck 'em all out of doors for you!"

Nevertheless, despite her luxurious life and her group of courtiers, 
Nana was nearly bored to death.  She had men for every minute of the 
night, and money overflowed even among the brushes and combs in the 
drawers of her dressing table.  But all this had ceased to satisfy 
her; she felt that there was a void somewhere or other, an empty 
place provocative of yawns.  Her life dragged on, devoid of 
occupation, and successive days only brought back the same 
monotonous hours.  Tomorrow had ceased to be; she lived like a bird: 
sure of her food and ready to perch and roost on any branch which 
she came to.  This certainty of food and drink left her lolling 
effortless for whole days, lulled her to sleep in conventual 
idleness and submission as though she were the prisoner of her 
trade.  Never going out except to drive, she was losing her walking 
powers.  She reverted to low childish tastes, would kiss Bijou from 
morning to night and kill time with stupid pleasures while waiting 
for the man whose caresses she tolerated with an appearance of 
complaisant lassitude.  Amid this species of self-abandonment she 
now took no thought about anything save her personal beauty; her 
sole care was to look after herself, to wash and to perfume her 
limbs, as became one who was proud of being able to undress at any 
moment and in face of anybody without having to blush for her 
imperfections.

At ten in the morning Nana would get up.  Bijou, the Scotch griffon 
dog, used to lick her face and wake her, and then would ensue a game 
of play lasting some five minutes, during which the dog would race 
about over her arms and legs and cause Count Muffat much distress.  
Bijou was the first little male he had ever been jealous of.  It was 
not at all proper, he thought, that an animal should go poking its 
nose under the bedclothes like that!  After this Nana would proceed 
to her dressing room, where she took a bath.  Toward eleven o'clock 
Francois would come and do up her hair before beginning the 
elaborate manipulations of the afternoon.

At breakfast, as she hated feeding alone, she nearly always had Mme 
Maloir at table with her.  This lady would arrive from unknown 
regions in the morning, wearing her extravagantly quaint hats, and 
would return at night to that mysterious existence of hers, about 
which no one ever troubled.  But the hardest to bear were the two or 
three hours between lunch and the toilet.  On ordinary occasions she 
proposed a game of bezique to her old friend; on others she would 
read the Figaro, in which the theatrical echoes and the fashionable 
news interested her.  Sometimes she even opened a book, for she 
fancied herself in literary matters.  Her toilet kept her till close 
on five o'clock, and then only she would wake from her daylong 
drowse and drive out or receive a whole mob of men at her own house.  
She would often dine abroad and always go to bed very late, only to 
rise again on the morrow with the same languor as before and to 
begin another day, differing in nothing from its predecessor.

The great distraction was to go to the Batignolles and see her 
little Louis at her aunt's.  For a fortnight at a time she forgot 
all about him, and then would follow an access of maternal love, and 
she would hurry off on foot with all the modesty and tenderness 
becoming a good mother.  On such occasions she would be the bearer 
of snuff for her aunt and of oranges and biscuits for the child, the 
kind of presents one takes to a hospital.  Or again she would drive 
up in her landau on her return from the Bois, decked in costumes, 
the resplendence of which greatly excited the dwellers in the 
solitary street.  Since her niece's magnificent elevation Mme Lerat 
had been puffed up with vanity.  She rarely presented herself in the 
Avenue de Villiers, for she was pleased to remark that it wasn't her 
place to do so, but she enjoyed triumphs in her own street.  She was 
delighted when the young woman arrived in dresses that had cost four 
or five thousand francs and would be occupied during the whole of 
the next day in showing off her presents and in citing prices which 
quite stupefied the neighbors.  As often as not, Nana kept Sunday 
free for the sake of "her family," and on such occasions, if Muffat 
invited her, she would refuse with the smile of a good little 
shopwoman.  It was impossible, she would answer; she was dining at 
her aunt's; she was going to see Baby.  Moreover, that poor little 
man Louiset was always ill.  He was almost three years old, growing 
quite a great boy!  But he had had an eczema on the back of his 
neck, and now concretions were forming in his ears, which pointed, 
it was feared, to decay of the bones of the skull.  When she saw how 
pale he looked, with his spoiled blood and his flabby flesh all out 
in yellow patches, she would become serious, but her principal 
feeling would be one of astonishment.  What could be the matter with 
the little love that he should grow so weakly?  She, his mother, was 
so strong and well!

On the days when her child did not engross attention Nana would 
again sink back into the noisy monotony of her existence, with its 
drives in the Bois, first nights at the theater, dinners and suppers 
at the Maison-d'Or or the Cafe Anglais, not to mention all the 
places of public resort, all the spectacles to which crowds rushed--
Mabille, the reviews, the races.  But whatever happened she still 
felt that stupid, idle void, which caused her, as it were, to suffer 
internal cramps.  Despite the incessant infatuations that possessed 
her heart, she would stretch out her arms with a gesture of immense 
weariness the moment she was left alone.  Solitude rendered her low 
spirited at once, for it brought her face to face with the emptiness 
and boredom within her.  Extremely gay by nature and profession, she 
became dismal in solitude and would sum up her life in the following 
ejaculation, which recurred incessantly between her yawns:

"Oh, how the men bother me!"

One afternoon as she was returning home from a concert, Nana, on the 
sidewalk in the Rue Montmartre, noticed a woman trotting along in 
down-at-the-heel boots, dirty petticoats and a hat utterly ruined by 
the rain.  She recognized her suddenly.

"Stop, Charles!" she shouted to the coachman and began calling: 
"Satin, Satin!"

Passers-by turned their heads; the whole street stared.  Satin had 
drawn near and was still further soiling herself against the 
carriage wheels.

"Do get in, my dear girl," said Nana tranquilly, disdaining the 
onlookers.

And with that she picked her up and carried her off, though she was 
in disgusting contrast to her light blue landau and her dress of 
pearl-gray silk trimmed with Chantilly, while the street smiled at 
the coachman's loftily dignified demeanor.

From that day forth Nana had a passion to occupy her thoughts.  
Satin became her vicious foible.  Washed and dressed and duly 
installed in the house in the Avenue de Villiers, during three days 
the girl talked of Saint-Lazare and the annoyances the sisters had 
caused her and how those dirty police people had put her down on the 
official list.  Nana grew indignant and comforted her and vowed she 
would get her name taken off, even though she herself should have to 
go and find out the minister of the interior.  Meanwhile there was 
no sort of hurry: nobody would come and search for her at Nana's--
that was certain.  And thereupon the two women began to pass tender 
afternoons together, making numberless endearing little speeches and 
mingling their kisses with laughter.  The same little sport, which 
the arrival of the plainclothes men had interrupted in the Rue de 
Laval, was beginning again in a jocular sort of spirit.  One fine 
evening, however, it became serious, and Nana, who had been so 
disgusted at Laure's, now understood what it meant.  She was upset 
and enraged by it, the more so because Satin disappeared on the 
morning of the fourth day.  No one had seen her go our.  She had, 
indeed, slipped away in her new dress, seized by a longing for air, 
full of sentimental regret for her old street existence.

That day there was such a terrible storm in the house that all the 
servants hung their heads in sheepish silence.  Nana had come near 
beating Francois for not throwing himself across the door through 
which Satin escaped.  She did her best, however, to control herself, 
and talked of Satin as a dirty swine.  Oh, it would teach her to 
pick filthy things like that out of the gutter!

When Madame shut herself up in her room in the afternoon Zoe heard 
her sobbing.  In the evening she suddenly asked for her carriage and 
had herself driven to Laure's.  It had occurred to her that she 
would find Satin at the table d'hote in the Rue des Martyrs.  She 
was not going there for the sake of seeing her again but in order to 
catch her one in the face!  As a matter of fact Satin was dining at 
a little table with Mme Robert.  Seeing Nana, she began to laugh, 
but the former, though wounded to the quick, did not make a scene.  
On the contrary, she was very sweet and very compliant.  She paid 
for champagne made five or six tablefuls tipsy and then carried off 
Satin when Mme Robert was in the closets.  Not till they were in the 
carriage did she make a mordant attack on her, threatening to kill 
her if she did it again.

After that day the same little business began again continually.  On 
twenty different occasions Nana, tragically furious, as only a 
jilted woman can be ran off in pursuit of this sluttish creature, 
whose flights were prompted by the boredom she suffered amid the 
comforts of her new home.  Nana began to talk of boxing Mme Robert's 
ears; one day she even meditated a duel; there was one woman too 
many, she said.

In these latter times, whenever she dined at Laure's, she donned her 
diamonds and occasionally brought with her Louise Violaine, Maria 
Blond and Tatan Nene, all of them ablaze with finery; and while the 
sordid feast was progressing in the three saloons and the yellow 
gaslight flared overhead, these four resplendent ladies would demean 
themselves with a vengeance, for it was their delight to dazzle the 
little local courtesans and to carry them off when dinner was over.  
On days such as these Laure, sleek and tight-laced as ever would 
kiss everyone with an air of expanded maternity.  Yet 
notwithstanding all these circumstances Satin's blue eyes and pure 
virginal face remained as calm as heretofore; torn, beaten and 
pestered by the two women, she would simply remark that it was a 
funny business, and they would have done far better to make it up at 
once.  It did no good to slap her; she couldn't cut herself in two, 
however much she wanted to be nice to everybody.  It was Nana who 
finally carried her off in triumph, so assiduously had she loaded 
Satin with kindnesses and presents.  In order to be revenged, 
however, Mme Robert wrote abominable, anonymous letters to her 
rival's lovers.

For some time past Count Muffat had appeared suspicious, and one 
morning, with considerable show of feeling, he laid before Nana an 
anonymous letter, where in the very first sentences she read that 
she was accused of deceiving the count with Vandeuvres and the young 
Hugons.

"It's false!  It's false!" she loudly exclaimed in accents of 
extraordinary candor.

"You swear?" asked Muffat, already willing to be comforted.

"I'll swear by whatever you like--yes, by the head of my child!"

But the letter was long.  Soon her connection with Satin was 
described in the broadest and most ignoble terms.  When she had done 
reading she smiled.

"Now I know who it comes from," she remarked simply.

And as Muffat wanted her denial to the charges therein contained, 
she resumed quietly enough:

"That's a matter which doesn't concern you, dear old pet.  How can 
it hurt you?"

She did not deny anything.  He used some horrified expressions.  
Thereupon she shrugged her shoulders.  Where had he been all this 
time?  Why, it was done everywhere!  And she mentioned her friends 
and swore that fashionable ladies went in for it.  In fact, to hear 
her speak, nothing could be commoner or more natural.  But a lie was 
a lie, and so a moment ago he had seen how angry she grew in the 
matter of Vandeuvres and the young Hugons!  Oh, if that had been 
true he would have been justified in throttling her!  But what was 
the good of lying to him about a matter of no consequence?  And with 
that she repeated her previous expression:

"Come now, how can it hurt you?"

Then as the scene still continued, she closed it with a rough 
speech:

"Besides, dear boy, if the thing doesn't suit you it's very simple: 
the house door's open!  There now, you must take me as you find me!"

He hung his head, for the young woman's vows of fidelity made him 
happy at bottom.  She, however, now knew her power over him and 
ceased to consider his feelings.  And from that time forth Satin was 
openly installed in the house on the same footing as the gentlemen.  
Vandeuvres had not needed anonymous letters in order to understand 
how matters stood, and accordingly he joked and tried to pick 
jealous quarrels with Satin.  Philippe and Georges, on their parts, 
treated her like a jolly good fellow, shaking hands with her and 
cracking the riskiest jokes imaginable.

Nana had an adventure one evening when this slut of a girl had given 
her the go-by and she had gone to dine in the Rue des Martyrs 
without being able to catch her.  While she was dining by herself 
Daguenet had appeared on the scene, for although he had reformed, he 
still occasionally dropped in under the influence of his old vicious 
inclinations.  He hoped of course that no one would meet him in 
these black recesses, dedicated to the town's lowest depravity.  
Accordingly even Nana's presence seemed to embarrass him at the 
outset.  But he was not the man to run away and, coming forward with 
a smile, he asked if Madame would be so kind as to allow him to dine 
at her table.  Noticing his jocular tone, Nana assumed her 
magnificently frigid demeanor and icily replied:

"Sit down where you please, sir.  We are in a public place."

Thus begun, the conversation proved amusing.  But at dessert Nana, 
bored and burning for a triumph, put her elbows on the table and 
began in the old familiar way:

"Well, what about your marriage, my lad?  Is it getting on all 
right?"

"Not much," Daguenet averred.

As a matter of fact, just when he was about to venture on his 
request at the Muffats', he had met with such a cold reception from 
the count that he had prudently refrained.  The business struck him 
as a failure.  Nana fixed her clear eyes on him; she was sitting, 
leaning her chin on her hand, and there was an ironical curve about 
her lips.

"Oh yes!  I'm a baggage," she resumed slowly.  "Oh yes, the future 
father-in-law will have to be dragged from between my claws!  Dear 
me, dear me, for a fellow with NOUS, you're jolly stupid!  What!  
D'you mean to say you're going to tell your tales to a man who 
adores me and tells me everything?  Now just listen: you shall marry 
if I wish it, my little man!"

For a minute or two he had felt the truth of this, and now he began 
scheming out a method of submission.  Nevertheless, he still talked 
jokingly, not wishing the matter to grow serious, and after he had 
put on his gloves he demanded the hand of Mlle Estelle de Beuville 
in the strict regulation manner.  Nana ended by laughing, as though 
she had been tickled.  Oh, that Mimi!  It was impossible to bear him 
a grudge!  Daguenet's great successes with ladies of her class were 
due to the sweetness of his voice, a voice of such musical purity 
and pliancy as to have won him among courtesans the sobriquet of 
"Velvet-Mouth."  Every woman would give way to him when he lulled 
her with his sonorous caresses.  He knew this power and rocked Nana 
to sleep with endless words, telling her all kinds of idiotic 
anecdotes.  When they left the table d'hote she was blushing rosy-
red; she trembled as she hung on his arm; he had reconquered her.  
As it was very fine, she sent her carriage away and walked with him 
as far as his own place, where she went upstairs with him naturally 
enough.  Two hours later, as she was dressing again, she said:

"So you hold to this marriage of yours, Mimi?"

"Egad," he muttered, "it's the best thing I could possibly do after 
all!  You know I'm stony broke."

She summoned him to button her boots, and after a pause:

"Good heavens!  I've no objection.  I'll shove you on!  She's as dry 
as a lath, is that little thing, but since it suits your game--oh, 
I'm agreeable: I'll run the thing through for you."

Then with bosom still uncovered, she began laughing:

"Only what will you give me?"

He had caught her in his arms and was kissing her on the shoulders 
in a perfect access of gratitude while she quivered with excitement 
and struggled merrily and threw herself backward in her efforts to 
be free.

"Oh, I know," she cried, excited by the contest.  "Listen to what I 
want in the way of commission.  On your wedding day you shall make 
me a present of your innocence.  Before your wife, d'you 
understand?"

"That's it!  That's it!" he said, laughing even louder than Nana.

The bargain amused them--they thought the whole business very good, 
indeed.

Now as it happened, there was a dinner at Nana's next day.  For the 
matter of that, it was the customary Thursday dinner, and Muffat, 
Vandeuvres, the young Hugons and Satin were present.  The count 
arrived early.  He stood in need of eighty thousand francs wherewith 
to free the young woman from two or three debts and to give her a 
set of sapphires she was dying to possess.  As he had already 
seriously lessened his capital, he was in search of a lender, for he 
did not dare to sell another property.  With the advice of Nana 
herself he had addressed himself to Labordette, but the latter, 
deeming it too heavy an undertaking, had mentioned it to the 
hairdresser Francis, who willingly busied himself in such affairs in 
order to oblige his lady clients.  The count put himself into the 
hands of these gentlemen but expressed a formal desire not to appear 
in the matter, and they both undertook to keep in hand the bill for 
a hundred thousand francs which he was to sign, excusing themselves 
at the same time for charging a matter of twenty thousand francs 
interest and loudly denouncing the blackguard usurers to whom, they 
declared, it had been necessary to have recourse.  When Muffat had 
himself announced, Francis was putting the last touches to Nana's 
coiffure.  Labordette also was sitting familiarly in the dressing 
room, as became a friend of no consequence.  Seeing the count, he 
discreetly placed a thick bundle of bank notes among the powders and 
pomades, and the bill was signed on the marble-topped dressing 
table.  Nana was anxious to keep Labordette to dinner, but he 
declined--he was taking a rich foreigner about Paris.  Muffat, 
however, led him aside and begged him to go to Becker, the jeweler, 
and bring him back thence the set of sapphires, which he wanted to 
present the young woman by way of surprise that very evening.  
Labordette willingly undertook the commission, and half an hour 
later Julien handed the jewel case mysteriously to the count.

During dinnertime Nana was nervous.  The sight of the eighty 
thousand francs had excited her.  To think all that money was to go 
to tradespeople!  It was a disgusting thought.  After soup had been 
served she grew sentimental, and in the splendid dining room, 
glittering with plate and glass, she talked of the bliss of poverty.  
The men were in evening dress, Nana in a gown of white embroidered 
satin, while Satin made a more modest appearance in black silk with 
a simple gold heart at her throat, which was a present from her kind 
friend.  Julien and Francois waited behind the guests and were 
assisted in this by Zoe.  All three looked most dignified.

"It's certain I had far greater fun when I hadn't a cent!" Nana 
repeated.

She had placed Muffat on her right hand and Vandeuvres on her left, 
but she scarcely looked at them, so taken up was she with Satin, who 
sat in state between Philippe and Georges on the opposite side of 
the table.

"Eh, duckie?" she kept saying at every turn.  "How we did use to 
laugh in those days when we went to Mother Josse's school in the Rue 
Polonceau!"

When the roast was being served the two women plunged into a world 
of reminiscences.  They used to have regular chattering fits of this 
kind when a sudden desire to stir the muddy depths of their 
childhood would possess them.  These fits always occurred when men 
were present: it was as though they had given way to a burning 
desire to treat them to the dunghill on which they had grown to 
woman's estate.  The gentlemen paled visibly and looked embarrassed.  
The young Hugons did their best to laugh, while Vandeuvres nervously 
toyed with his beard and Muffat redoubled his gravity.

"You remember Victor?" said Nana.  "There was a wicked little fellow 
for you!  Why, he used to take the little girls into cellars!"

"I remember him perfectly," replied Satin.  "I recollect the big 
courtyard at your place very well.  There was a portress there with 
a broom!"

"Mother Boche--she's dead."

"And I can still picture your shop.  Your mother was a great fatty.  
One evening when we were playing your father came in drunk.  Oh, so 
drunk!"

At this point Vandeuvres tried to intercept the ladies' 
reminiscences and to effect a diversion,

"I say, my dear, I should be very glad to have some more truffles.  
They're simply perfect.  Yesterday I had some at the house of the 
Duc de Corbreuse, which did not come up to them at all."

"The truffles, Julien!" said Nana roughly.

Then returning to the subject:

"By Jove, yes, Dad hadn't any sense!  And then what a smash there 
was!  You should have seen it--down, down, down we went, starving 
away all the time.  I can tell you I've had to bear pretty well 
everything and it's a miracle I didn't kick the bucket over it, like 
Daddy and Mamma."

This time Muffat, who was playing with his knife in a state of 
infinite exasperation, made so bold as to intervene.

"What you're telling us isn't very cheerful."

"Eh, what?  Not cheerful!" she cried with a withering glance.  "I 
believe you; it isn't cheerful!  Somebody had to earn a living for 
us dear boy.  Oh yes, you know, I'm the right sort; I don't mince 
matters.  Mamma was a laundress; Daddy used to get drunk, and he 
died of it!  There!  If it doesn't suit you--if you're ashamed of my 
family--"

They all protested.  What was she after now?  They had every sort of 
respect for her family!  But she went on:

"If you're ashamed of my family you'll please leave me, because I'm 
not one of those women who deny their father and mother.  You must 
take me and them together, d'you understand?"

They took her as required; they accepted the dad, the mamma, the 
past; in fact, whatever she chose.  With their eyes fixed on the 
tablecloth, the four now sat shrinking and insignificant while Nana, 
in a transport of omnipotence, trampled on them in the old muddy 
boots worn long since in the Rue de la Goutte-d'Or.  She was 
determined not to lay down the cudgels just yet.  It was all very 
fine to bring her fortunes, to build her palaces; she would never 
leave off regretting the time when she munched apples!  Oh, what 
bosh that stupid thing money was!  It was made for the tradespeople!  
Finally her outburst ended in a sentimentally expressed desire for a 
simple, openhearted existence, to be passed in an atmosphere of 
universal benevolence.

When she got to this point she noticed Julien waiting idly by.

"Well, what's the matter?  Hand the champagne then!" she said.  "Why 
d'you stand staring at me like a goose?"

During this scene the servants had never once smiled.  They 
apparently heard nothing, and the more their mistress let herself 
down, the more majestic they became.  Julien set to work to pour out 
the champagne and did so without mishap, but Francois, who was 
handing round the fruit, was so unfortunate as to tilt the fruit 
dish too low, and the apples, the pears and the grapes rolled on the 
table.

"You bloody clumsy lot!" cried Nana.

The footman was mistaken enough to try and explain that the fruit 
had not been firmly piled up.  Zoe had disarranged it by taking out 
some oranges.

"Then it's Zoe that's the goose!" said Nana.

"Madame--" murmured the lady's maid in an injured tone.

Straightway Madame rose to her feet, and in a sharp voice and with 
royally authoritative gesture:

"We've had enough of this, haven't we?  Leave the room, all of you!  
We don't want you any longer!"

This summary procedure calmed her down, and she was forthwith all 
sweetness and amiability.  The dessert proved charming, and the 
gentlemen grew quite merry waiting on themselves.  But Satin, having 
peeled a pear, came and ate it behind her darling, leaning on her 
shoulder the while and whispering sundry little remarks in her ear, 
at which they both laughed very loudly.  By and by she wanted to 
share her last piece of pear with Nana and presented it to her 
between her teeth.  Whereupon there was a great nibbling of lips, 
and the pear was finished amid kisses.  At this there was a burst of 
comic protest from the gentlemen, Philippe shouting to them to take 
it easy and Vandeuvres asking if one ought to leave the room.  
Georges, meanwhile, had come and put his arm round Satin's waist and 
had brought her back to her seat.

"How silly of you!" said Nana.  "You're making her blush, the poor, 
darling duck.  Never mind, dear girl, let them chaff.  It's our own 
little private affair."

And turning to Muffat, who was watching them with his serious 
expression:

"Isn't it, my friend?"

"Yes, certainly," he murmured with a slow nod of approval.

He no longer protested now.  And so amid that company of gentlemen 
with the great names and the old, upright traditions, the two women 
sat face to face, exchanging tender glances, conquering, reigning, 
in tranquil defiance of the laws of sex, in open contempt for the 
male portion of the community.  The gentlemen burst into applause.

The company went upstairs to take coffee in the little drawing room, 
where a couple of lamps cast a soft glow over the rosy hangings and 
the lacquer and old gold of the knickknacks.  At that hour of the 
evening the light played discreetly over coffers, bronzes and china, 
lighting up silver or ivory inlaid work, bringing into view the 
polished contours of a carved stick and gleaming over a panel with 
glossy silky reflections.  The fire, which had been burning since 
the afternoon, was dying out in glowing embers.  It was very warm--
the air behind the curtains and hangings was languid with warmth.  
The room was full of Nana's intimate existence: a pair of gloves, a 
fallen handkerchief, an open book, lay scattered about, and their 
owner seemed present in careless attire with that well-known odor of 
violets and that species of untidiness which became her in her 
character of good-natured courtesan and had such a charming effect 
among all those rich surroundings.  The very armchairs, which were 
as wide as beds, and the sofas, which were as deep as alcoves, 
invited to slumber oblivious of the flight of time and to tender 
whispers in shadowy corners.

Satin went and lolled back in the depths of a sofa near the 
fireplace.  She had lit a cigarette, but Vandeuvres began amusing 
himself by pretending to be ferociously jealous.  Nay, he even 
threatened to send her his seconds if she still persisted in keeping 
Nana from her duty.  Philippe and Georges joined him and teased her 
and badgered her so mercilessly that at last she shouted out:

"Darling!  Darling!  Do make 'em keep quiet!  They're still after 
me!"

"Now then, let her be," said Nana seriously.  "I won't have her 
tormented; you know that quite well.  And you, my pet, why d'you 
always go mixing yourself up with them when they've got so little 
sense?"

Satin, blushing all over and putting out her tongue, went into the 
dressing room, through the widely open door of which you caught a 
glimpse of pale marbles gleaming in the milky light of a gas flame 
in a globe of rough glass.  After that Nana talked to the four men 
as charmingly as hostess could.  During the day she had read a novel 
which was at that time making a good deal of noise.  It was the 
history of a courtesan, and Nana was very indignant, declaring the 
whole thing to be untrue and expressing angry dislike to that kind 
of monstrous literature which pretends to paint from nature.  "Just 
as though one could describe everything," she said.  Just as though 
a novel ought not to be written so that the reader may while away an 
hour pleasantly!  In the matter of books and of plays Nana had very 
decided opinions: she wanted tender and noble productions, things 
that would set her dreaming and would elevate her soul.  Then 
allusion being made in the course of conversation to the troubles 
agitating Paris, the incendiary articles in the papers, the 
incipient popular disturbances which followed the calls to arms 
nightly raised at public meetings, she waxed wroth with the 
Republicans.  What on earth did those dirty people who never washed 
really want?  Were folks not happy?  Had not the emperor done 
everything for the people?  A nice filthy lot of people!  She knew 
'em; she could talk about 'em, and, quite forgetting the respect 
which at dinner she had just been insisting should be paid to her 
humble circle in the Rue de la Goutte-d'Or, she began blackguarding 
her own class with all the terror and disgust peculiar to a woman 
who had risen successfully above it.  That very afternoon she had 
read in the Figaro an account of the proceedings at a public meeting 
which had verged on the comic.  Owing to the slang words that had 
been used and to the piggish behavior of a drunken man who had got 
himself chucked, she was laughing at those proceedings still.

"Oh, those drunkards!" she said with a disgusted air.  "No, look you 
here, their republic would be a great misfortune for everybody!  Oh, 
may God preserve us the emperor as long as possible!"

"God will hear your prayer, my dear," Muffat replied gravely.  "To 
be sure, the emperor stands firm."

He liked her to express such excellent views.  Both, indeed, 
understood one another in political matters.  Vandeuvres and 
Philippe Hugon likewise indulged in endless jokes against the 
"cads," the quarrelsome set who scuttled off the moment they clapped 
eyes on a bayonet.  But Georges that evening remained pale and 
somber.

"What can be the matter with that baby?" asked Nana, noticing his 
troubled appearance.

"With me?  Nothing--I am listening," he muttered.

But he was really suffering.  On rising from table he had heard 
Philippe joking with the young woman, and now it was Philippe, and 
not himself, who sat beside her.  His heart, he knew not why, 
swelled to bursting.  He could not bear to see them so close 
together; such vile thoughts oppressed him that shame mingled with 
his anguish.  He who laughed at Satin, who had accepted Steiner and 
Muffat and all the rest, felt outraged and murderous at the thought 
that Philippe might someday touch that woman.

"Here, take Bijou," she said to comfort him, and she passed him the 
little dog which had gone to sleep on her dress.

And with that Georges grew happy again, for with the beast still 
warm from her lap in his arms, he held, as it were, part of her.

Allusion had been made to a considerable loss which Vandeuvres had 
last night sustained at the Imperial Club.  Muffat, who did not 
play, expressed great astonishment, but Vandeuvres smilingly alluded 
to his imminent ruin, about which Paris was already talking.  The 
kind of death you chose did not much matter, he averred; the great 
thing was to die handsomely.  For some time past Nana had noticed 
that he was nervous and had a sharp downward droop of the mouth and 
a fitful gleam in the depths of his clear eyes.  But he retained his 
haughty aristocratic manner and the delicate elegance of his 
impoverished race, and as yet these strange manifestations were 
only, so to speak, momentary fits of vertigo overcoming a brain 
already sapped by play and by debauchery.  One night as he lay 
beside her he had frightened her with a dreadful story.  He had told 
her he contemplated shutting himself up in his stable and setting 
fire to himself and his horses at such time as he should have 
devoured all his substance.  His only hope at that period was a 
horse, Lusignan by name, which he was training for the Prix de 
Paris.  He was living on this horse, which was the sole stay of his 
shaken credit, and whenever Nana grew exacting he would put her off 
till June and to the probability of Lusignan's winning.

"Bah!  He may very likely lose," she said merrily, "since he's going 
to clear them all out at the races."

By way of reply he contented himself by smiling a thin, mysterious 
smile.  Then carelessly:

"By the by, I've taken the liberty of giving your name to my 
outsider, the filly.  Nana, Nana--that sounds well.  You're not 
vexed?"

"Vexed, why?" she said in a state of inward ecstasy.

The conversation continued, and same mention was made of an 
execution shortly to take place.  The young woman said she was 
burning to go to it when Satin appeared at the dressing-room door 
and called her in tones of entreaty.  She got up at once and left 
the gentlemen lolling lazily about, while they finished their cigars 
and discussed the grave question as to how far a murderer subject to 
chronic alcoholism is responsible for his act.  In the dressing room 
Zoe sat helpless on a chair, crying her heart out, while Satin 
vainly endeavored to console her.

"What's the matter?" said Nana in surprise.

"Oh, darling, do speak to her!" said Satin.  "I've been trying to 
make her listen to reason for the last twenty minutes.  She's crying 
because you called her a goose."

"Yes, madame, it's very hard--very hard," stuttered Zoe, choked by a 
fresh fit of sobbing.

This sad sight melted the young woman's heart at once.  She spoke 
kindly, and when the other woman still refused to grow calm she sank 
down in front of her and took her round the waist with truly cordial 
familiarity:

"But, you silly, I said 'goose' just as I might have said anything 
else.  How shall I explain?  I was in a passion--it was wrong of me; 
now calm down."

"I who love Madame so," stuttered Zoe; "after all I've done for 
Madame."

Thereupon Nana kissed the lady's maid and, wishing to show her she 
wasn't vexed, gave her a dress she had worn three times.  Their 
quarrels always ended up in the giving of presents!  Zoe plugged her 
handkerchief into her eyes.  She carried the dress off over her arm 
and added before leaving that they were very sad in the kitchen and 
that Julien and Francois had been unable to eat, so entirely had 
Madame's anger taken away their appetites.  Thereupon Madame sent 
them a louis as a pledge of reconciliation.  She suffered too much 
if people around her were sorrowful.

Nana was returning to the drawing room, happy in the thought that 
she had patched up a disagreement which was rendering her quietly 
apprehensive of the morrow, when Satin came and whispered vehemently 
in her ear.  She was full of complaint, threatened to be off if 
those men still went on teasing her and kept insisting that her 
darling should turn them all out of doors for that night, at any 
rate.  It would be a lesson to them.  And then it would be so nice 
to be alone, both of them!  Nana, with a return of anxiety, declared 
it to be impossible.  Thereupon the other shouted at her like a 
violent child and tried hard to overrule her.

"I wish it, d'you see?  Send 'em away or I'm off!"

And she went back into the drawing room, stretched herself out in 
the recesses of a divan, which stood in the background near the 
window, and lay waiting, silent and deathlike, with her great eyes 
fixed upon Nana.

The gentlemen were deciding against the new criminological theories.  
Granted that lovely invention of irresponsibility in certain 
pathological cases, and criminals ceased to exist and sick people 
alone remained.  The young woman, expressing approval with an 
occasional nod, was busy considering how best to dismiss the count.  
The others would soon be going, but he would assuredly prove 
obstinate.  In fact, when Philippe got up to withdraw, Georges 
followed him at once--he seemed only anxious not to leave his 
brother behind.  Vandeuvres lingered some minutes longer, feeling 
his way, as it were, and waiting to find out if, by any chance, some 
important business would oblige Muffat to cede him his place.  Soon, 
however, when he saw the count deliberately taking up his quarters 
for the night, he desisted from his purpose and said good-by, as 
became a man of tact.  But on his way to the door, he noticed Satin 
staring fixedly at Nana, as usual.  Doubtless he understood what 
this meant, for he seemed amused and came and shook hands with her.

"We're not angry, eh?" he whispered.  "Pray pardon me.  You're the 
nicer attraction of the two, on my honor!"

Satin deigned no reply.  Nor did she take her eyes off Nana and the 
count, who were now alone.  Muffat, ceasing to be ceremonious, had 
come to sit beside the young woman.  He took her fingers and began 
kissing them.  Whereupon Nana, seeking to change the current of his 
thoughts, asked him if his daughter Estelle were better.  The 
previous night he had been complaining of the child's melancholy 
behavior--he could not even spend a day happily at his own house, 
with his wife always out and his daughter icily silent.

In family matters of this kind Nana was always full of good advice, 
and when Muffat abandoned all his usual self-control under the 
influence of mental and physical relaxation and once more launched 
out into his former plaints, she remembered the promise she had 
made.

"Suppose you were to marry her?" she said.  And with that she 
ventured to talk of Daguenet.  At the mere mention of the name the 
count was filled with disgust.  "Never," he said after what she had 
told him!

She pretended great surprise and then burst out laughing and put her 
arm round his neck.

"Oh, the jealous man!  To think of it!  Just argue it out a little.  
Why, they slandered me to you--I was furious.  At present I should 
be ever so sorry if--"

But over Muffat's shoulder she met Satin's gaze.  And she left him 
anxiously and in a grave voice continued:

"This marriage must come off, my friend; I don't want to prevent 
your daughter's happiness.  The young man's most charming; you could 
not possibly find a better sort."

And she launched into extraordinary praise of Daguenet.  The count 
had again taken her hands; he no longer refused now; he would see 
about it, he said, they would talk the matter over.  By and by, when 
he spoke of going to bed, she sank her voice and excused herself.  
It was impossible; she was not well.  If he loved her at all he 
would not insist!  Nevertheless, he was obstinate; he refused to go 
away, and she was beginning to give in when she met Satin's eyes 
once more.  Then she grew inflexible.  No, the thing was out of the 
question!  The count, deeply moved and with a look of suffering, had 
risen and was going in quest of his hat.  But in the doorway he 
remembered the set of sapphires; he could feel the case in his 
pocket.  He had been wanting to hide it at the bottom of the bed so 
that when she entered it before him she should feel it against her 
legs.  Since dinnertime he had been meditating this little surprise 
like a schoolboy, and now, in trouble and anguish of heart at being 
thus dismissed, he gave her the case without further ceremony.

"What is it?" she queried.  "Sapphires?  Dear me!  Oh yes, it's that 
set.  How sweet you are!  But I say, my darling, d'you believe it's 
the same one?  In the shopwindow it made a much greater show."

That was all the thanks he got, and she let him go away.  He noticed 
Satin stretched out silent and expectant, and with that he gazed at 
both women and without further insistence submitted to his fate and 
went downstairs.  The hall door had not yet closed when Satin caught 
Nana round the waist and danced and sang.  Then she ran to the 
window.

"Oh, just look at the figure he cuts down in the street!"  The two 
women leaned upon the wrought-iron window rail in the shadow of the 
curtains.  One o'clock struck.  The Avenue de Villiers was deserted, 
and its double file of gas lamps stretched away into the darkness of 
the damp March night through which great gusts of wind kept 
sweeping, laden with rain.  There were vague stretches of land on 
either side of the road which looked like gulfs of shadow, while 
scaffoldings round mansions in process of construction loomed upward 
under the dark sky.  They laughed uncontrollably as they watched 
Muffat's rounded back and glistening shadow disappearing along the 
wet sidewalk into the glacial, desolate plains of new Paris.  But 
Nana silenced Satin.

"Take care; there are the police!"

Thereupon they smothered their laughter and gazed in secret fear at 
two dark figures walking with measured tread on the opposite side of 
the avenue.  Amid all her luxurious surroundings, amid all the royal 
splendors of the woman whom all must obey, Nana still stood in 
horror of the police and did not like to hear them mentioned any 
oftener than death.  She felt distinctly unwell when a policeman 
looked up at her house.  One never knew what such people might do!  
They might easily take them for loose women if they heard them 
laughing at that hour of the night.  Satin, with a little shudder, 
had squeezed herself up against Nana.  Nevertheless, the pair stayed 
where they were and were soon interested in the approach of a 
lantern, the light of which danced over the puddles in the road.  It 
was an old ragpicker woman who was busy raking in the gutters.  
Satin recognized her.

"Dear me," she exclaimed, "it's Queen Pomare with her wickerwork 
shawl!"

And while a gust of wind lashed the fine rain in their faces she 
told her beloved the story of Queen Pomare.  Oh, she had been a 
splendid girl once upon a time: all Paris had talked of her beauty.  
And such devilish go and such cheek!  Why, she led the men about 
like dogs, and great people stood blubbering on her stairs!  Now she 
was in the habit of getting tipsy, and the women round about would 
make her drink absinthe for the sake of a laugh, after which the 
street boys would throw stones at her and chase her.  In fact, it 
was a regular smashup; the queen had tumbled into the mud!  Nana 
listened, feeling cold all over.

"You shall see," added Satin.

She whistled a man's whistle, and the ragpicker, who was then below 
the window, lifted her head and showed herself by the yellow flare 
of her lantern.  Framed among rags, a perfect bundle of them, a face 
looked out from under a tattered kerchief--a blue, seamed face with 
a toothless, cavernous mouth and fiery bruises where the eyes should 
be.  And Nana, seeing the frightful old woman, the wanton drowned in 
drink, had a sudden fit of recollection and saw far back amid the 
shadows of consciousness the vision of Chamont--Irma d'Anglars, the 
old harlot crowned with years and honors, ascending the steps in 
front of her chateau amid abjectly reverential villagers.  Then as 
Satin whistled again, making game of the old hag, who could not see 
her:

"Do leave off; there are the police!" she murmured in changed tones.  
"In with us, quick, my pet!"

The measured steps were returning, and they shut the window.  
Turning round again, shivering, and with the damp of night on her 
hair, Nana was momentarily astounded at sight of her drawing room.  
It seemed as though she had forgotten it and were entering an 
unknown chamber.  So warm, so full of perfume, was the air she 
encountered that she experienced a sense of delighted surprise.  The 
heaped-up wealth of the place, the Old World furniture, the fabrics 
of silk and gold, the ivory, the bronzes, were slumbering in the 
rosy light of the lamps, while from the whole of the silent house a 
rich feeling of great luxury ascended, the luxury of the solemn 
reception rooms, of the comfortable, ample dining room, of the vast 
retired staircase, with their soft carpets and seats.  Her 
individuality, with its longing for domination and enjoyment and its 
desire to possess everything that she might destroy everything, was 
suddenly increased.  Never before had she felt so profoundly the 
puissance of her sex.  She gazed slowly round and remarked with an 
expression of grave philosophy:

"Ah well, all the same, one's jolly well right to profit by things 
when one's young!"

But now Satin was rolling on the bearskins in the bedroom and 
calling her.

"Oh, do come!  Do come!"

Nana undressed in the dressing room, and in order to be quicker 
about it she took her thick fell of blonde hair in both hands and 
began shaking it above the silver wash hand basin, while a downward 
hail of long hairpins rang a little chime on the shining metal.



CHAPTER XI


One Sunday the race for the Grand Prix de Paris was being run in the 
Bois de Boulogne beneath skies rendered sultry by the first heats of 
June.  The sun that morning had risen amid a mist of dun-colored 
dust, but toward eleven o'clock, just when the carriages were 
reaching the Longchamps course, a southerly wind had swept away the 
clouds; long streamers of gray vapor were disappearing across the 
sky, and gaps showing an intense blue beyond were spreading from one 
end of the horizon to the other.  In the bright bursts of sunlight 
which alternated with the clouds the whole scene shone again, from 
the field which was gradually filling with a crowd of carriages, 
horsemen and pedestrians, to the still-vacant course, where the 
judge's box stood, together with the posts and the masts for 
signaling numbers, and thence on to the five symmetrical stands of 
brickwork and timber, rising gallery upon gallery in the middle of 
the weighing enclosure opposite.  Beyond these, bathed in the light 
of noon, lay the vast level plain, bordered with little trees and 
shut in to the westward by the wooded heights of Saint-Cloud and the 
Suresnes, which, in their turn, were dominated by the severe 
outlines of Mont-Valerien.

Nana, as excited as if the Grand Prix were going to make her 
fortune, wanted to take up a position by the railing next the 
winning post.  She had arrived very early--she was, in fact, one of 
the first to come--in a landau adorned with silver and drawn, a la 
Daumont, by four splendid white horses.  This landau was a present 
from Count Muffat.  When she had made her appearance at the entrance 
to the field with two postilions jogging blithely on the near horses 
and two footmen perching motionless behind the carriage, the people 
had rushed to look as though a queen were passing.  She sported the 
blue and white colors of the Vandeuvres stable, and her dress was 
remarkable.  It consisted of a little blue silk bodice and tunic, 
which fitted closely to the body and bulged out enormously behind 
her waist, thereby bringing her lower limbs into bold relief in such 
a manner as to be extremely noticeable in that epoch of voluminous 
skirts.  Then there was a white satin dress with white satin sleeves 
and a sash worn crosswise over the shoulders, the whole ornamented 
with silver guipure which shone in the sun.  In addition to this, in 
order to be still more like a jockey, she had stuck a blue toque 
with a white feather jauntily upon her chignon, the fair tresses 
from which flowed down beyond her shoulders and resembled an 
enormous russet pigtail.

Twelve struck.  The public would have to wait more than three hours 
for the Grand Prix to be run.  When the landau had drawn up beside 
the barriers Nana settled herself comfortably down as though she 
were in her own house.  A whim had prompted her to bring Bijou and 
Louiset with her, and the dog crouched among her skirts, shivering 
with cold despite the heat of the day, while amid a bedizenment of 
ribbons and laces the child's poor little face looked waxen and dumb 
and white in the open air.  Meanwhile the young woman, without 
troubling about the people near her, talked at the top of her voice 
with Georges and Philippe Hugon, who were seated opposite on the 
front seat among such a mountain of bouquets of white roses and blue 
myosotis that they were buried up to their shoulders.

"Well then," she was saying, "as he bored me to death, I showed him 
the door.  And now it's two days that he's been sulking."

She was talking of Muffat, but she took care not to confess to the 
young men the real reason for this first quarrel, which was that one 
evening he had found a man's hat in her bedroom.  She had indeed 
brought home a passer-by out of sheer ennui--a silly infatuation.

"You have no idea how funny he is," she continued, growing merry 
over the particulars she was giving.  "He's a regular bigot at 
bottom, so he says his prayers every evening.  Yes, he does.  He's 
under the impression I notice nothing because I go to bed first so 
as not to be in his way, but I watch him out of the corner of my 
eye.  Oh, he jaws away, and then he crosses himself when he turns 
round to step over me and get to the inside of the bed."

"Jove, it's sly," muttered Philippe.  "That's what happens before, 
but afterward, what then?"

She laughed merrily.

"Yes, just so, before and after!  When I'm going to sleep I hear him 
jawing away again.  But the biggest bore of all is that we can't 
argue about anything now without his growing 'pi.'  I've always been 
religious.  Yes, chaff as much as you like; that won't prevent me 
believing what I do believe!  Only he's too much of a nuisance: he 
blubbers; he talks about remorse.  The day before yesterday, for 
instance, he had a regular fit of it after our usual row, and I 
wasn't the least bit reassured when all was over."

But she broke off, crying out:

"Just look at the Mignons arriving.  Dear me, they've brought the 
children!  Oh, how those little chaps are dressed up!"

The Mignons were in a landau of severe hue; there was something 
substantially luxurious about their turnout, suggesting rich retired 
tradespeople.  Rose was in a gray silk gown trimmed with red knots 
and with puffs; she was smiling happily at the joyous behavior of 
Henri and Charles, who sat on the front seat, looking awkward in 
their ill-fitting collegians' tunics.  But when the landau had drawn 
up by the rails and she perceived Nana sitting in triumph among her 
bouquets, with her four horses and her liveries, she pursed up her 
lips, sat bolt upright and turned her head away.  Mignon, on the 
other hand, looking the picture of freshness and gaiety, waved her a 
salutation.  He made it a matter of principle to keep out of 
feminine disagreements.

"By the by," Nana resumed, "d'you know a little old man who's very 
clean and neat and has bad teeth--a Monsieur Venot?  He came to see 
me this morning."

"Monsieur Venot?" said Georges in great astonishment.  "It's 
impossible!  Why, the man's a Jesuit!"

"Precisely; I spotted that.  Oh, you have no idea what our 
conversation was like!  It was just funny!  He spoke to me about the 
count, about his divided house, and begged me to restore a family 
its happiness.  He was very polite and very smiling for the matter 
of that.  Then I answered to the effect that I wanted nothing 
better, and I undertook to reconcile the count and his wife.  You 
know it's not humbug.  I should be delighted to see them all happy 
again, the poor things!  Besides, it would be a relief to me for 
there are days--yes, there are days--when he bores me to death."

The weariness of the last months escaped her in this heartfelt 
outburst.  Moreover, the count appeared to be in big money 
difficulties; he was anxious and it seemed likely that the bill 
which Labordette had put his name to would not be met.

"Dear me, the countess is down yonder," said Georges, letting his 
gaze wander over the stands.

"Where, where?" cried Nana.  "What eyes that baby's got!  Hold my 
sunshade, Philippe."

But with a quick forward dart Georges had outstripped his brother.  
It enchanted him to be holding the blue silk sunshade with its 
silver fringe.  Nana was scanning the scene through a huge pair of 
field glasses.

"Ah yes!  I see her," she said at length.  "In the right-hand stand, 
near a pillar, eh?  She's in mauve, and her daughter in white by her 
side.  Dear me, there's Daguenet going to bow to them."

Thereupon Philippe talked of Daguenet's approaching marriage with 
that lath of an Estelle.  It was a settled matter--the banns were 
being published.  At first the countess had opposed it, but the 
count, they said, had insisted.  Nana smiled.

"I know, I know," she murmured.  "So much the better for Paul.  He's 
a nice boy--he deserves it"

And leaning toward Louiset:

"You're enjoying yourself, eh?  What a grave face!"

The child never smiled.  With a very old expression he was gazing at 
all those crowds, as though the sight of them filled him with 
melancholy reflections.  Bijou, chased from the skirts of the young 
woman who was moving about a great deal, had come to nestle, 
shivering, against the little fellow.

Meanwhile the field was filling up.  Carriages, a compact, 
interminable file of them, were continually arriving through the 
Porte de la Cascade.  There were big omnibuses such as the Pauline, 
which had started from the Boulevard des Italiens, freighted with 
its fifty passengers, and was now going to draw up to the right of 
the stands.  Then there were dogcarts, victorias, landaus, all 
superbly well turned out, mingled with lamentable cabs which jolted 
along behind sorry old hacks, and four-in-hands, sending along their 
four horses, and mail coaches, where the masters sat on the seats 
above and left the servants to take care of the hampers of champagne 
inside, and "spiders," the immense wheels of which were a flash of 
glittering steel, and light tandems, which looked as delicately 
formed as the works of a clock and slipped along amid a peal of 
little bells.  Every few seconds an equestrian rode by, and a swarm 
of people on foot rushed in a scared way among the carriages.  On 
the green the far-off rolling sound which issued from the avenues in 
the Bois died out suddenly in dull rustlings, and now nothing was 
audible save the hubbub of the ever-increasing crowds and cries and 
calls and the crackings of whips in the open.  When the sun, amid 
bursts of wind, reappeared at the edge of a cloud, a long ray of 
golden light ran across the field, lit up the harness and the 
varnished coach panels and touched the ladies' dresses with fire, 
while amid the dusty radiance the coachmen, high up on their boxes, 
flamed beside their great whips.

Labordette was getting out of an open carriage where Gaga, Clarisse 
and Blanche de Sivry had kept a place for him.  As he was hurrying 
to cross the course and enter the weighing enclosure Nana got 
Georges to call him.  Then when he came up:

"What's the betting on me?" she asked laughingly.

She referred to the filly Nana, the Nana who had let herself be 
shamefully beaten in the race for the Prix de Diane and had not even 
been placed in April and May last when she ran for the Prix des Cars 
and the Grande Poule des Produits, both of which had been gained by 
Lusignan, the other horse in the Vandeuvres stable.  Lusignan had 
all at once become prime favorite, and since yesterday he had been 
currently taken at two to one.

"Always fifty to one against," replied Labordette.

"The deuce!  I'm not worth much," rejoined Nana, amused by the jest.  
"I don't back myself then; no, by jingo!  I don't put a single louis 
on myself."

Labordette went off again in a great hurry, but she recalled him.  
She wanted some advice.  Since he kept in touch with the world of 
trainers and jockeys he had special information about various 
stables.  His prognostications had come true a score of times 
already, and people called him the "King of Tipsters."

"Let's see, what horses ought I to choose?" said the young woman.  
"What's the betting on the Englishman?"

"Spirit?  Three to one against.  Valerio II, the same.  As to the 
others, they're laying twenty-five to one against Cosinus, forty to 
one against Hazard, thirty to one against Bourn, thirty-five to one 
against Pichenette, ten to one against Frangipane."

"No, I don't bet on the Englishman, I don't.  I'm a patriot.  
Perhaps Valerio II would do, eh?  The Duc de Corbreuse was beaming a 
little while ago.  Well, no, after all!  Fifty louis on Lusignan; 
what do you say to that?"

Labordette looked at her with a singular expression.  She leaned 
forward and asked him questions in a low voice, for she was aware 
that Vandeuvres commissioned him to arrange matters with the 
bookmakers so as to be able to bet the more easily.  Supposing him 
to have got to know something, he might quite well tell it her.  But 
without entering into explanations Labordette persuaded her to trust 
to his sagacity.  He would put on her fifty louis for her as he 
might think best, and she would not repent of his arrangement.

"All the horses you like!" she cried gaily, letting him take his 
departure, "but no Nana; she's a jade!"

There was a burst of uproarious laughter in the carriage.  The young 
men thought her sally very amusing, while Louiset in his ignorance 
lifted his pale eyes to his mother's face, for her loud exclamations 
surprised him.  However, there was no escape for Labordette as yet.  
Rose Mignon had made a sign to him and was now giving him her 
commands while he wrote figures in a notebook.  Then Clarisse and 
Gaga called him back in order to change their bets, for they had 
heard things said in the crowd, and now they didn't want to have 
anything more to do with Valerio II and were choosing Lusignan.  He 
wrote down their wishes with an impassible expression and at length 
managed to escape.  He could be seen disappearing between two of the 
stands on the other side of the course.

Carriages were still arriving.  They were by this time drawn up five 
rows deep, and a dense mass of them spread along the barriers, 
checkered by the light coats of white horses.  Beyond them other 
carriages stood about in comparative isolation, looking as though 
they had stuck fast in the grass.  Wheels and harness were here, 
there and everywhere, according as the conveyances to which they 
belonged were side by side, at an angle, across and across or head 
to head.  Over such spaces of turf as still remained unoccupied 
cavaliers kept trotting, and black groups of pedestrians moved 
continually.  The scene resembled the field where a fair is being 
held, and above it all, amid the confused motley of the crowd, the 
drinking booths raised their gray canvas roofs which gleamed white 
in the sunshine.  But a veritable tumult, a mob, an eddy of hats, 
surged round the several bookmakers, who stood in open carriages 
gesticulating like itinerant dentists while their odds were pasted 
up on tall boards beside them.

"All the same, it's stupid not to know on what horse one's betting," 
Nana was remarking.  "I really must risk some louis in person."

She had stood up to select a bookmaker with a decent expression of 
face but forgot what she wanted on perceiving a perfect crowd of her 
acquaintance.  Besides the Mignons, besides Gaga, Clarisse and 
Blanche, there were present, to the right and left, behind and in 
the middle of the mass of carriages now hemming in her landau, the 
following ladies: Tatan Nene and Maria Blond in a victoria, Caroline 
Hequet with her mother and two gentlemen in an open carriage, Louise 
Violaine quite alone, driving a little basket chaise decked with 
orange and green ribbons, the colors of the Mechain stables, and 
finally, Lea de Horn on the lofty seat of a mail coach, where a band 
of young men were making a great din.  Farther off, in a HUIT 
RESSORTS of aristocratic appearance, Lucy Stewart, in a very simple 
black silk dress, sat, looking distinguished beside a tall young man 
in the uniform of a naval cadet.  But what most astounded Nana was 
the arrival of Simonne in a tandem which Steiner was driving, while 
a footman sat motionless, with folded arms, behind them.  She looked 
dazzling in white satin striped with yellow and was covered with 
diamonds from waist to hat.  The banker, on his part, was handling a 
tremendous whip and sending along his two horses, which were 
harnessed tandemwise, the leader being a little warm-colored 
chestnut with a mouselike trot, the shaft horse a big brown bay, a 
stepper, with a fine action.

"Deuce take it!" said Nana.  "So that thief Steiner has cleared the 
Bourse again, has he?  I say, isn't Simonne a swell!  It's too much 
of a good thing; he'll get into the clutches of the law!"

Nevertheless, she exchanged greetings at a distance.  Indeed, she 
kept waving her hand and smiling, turning round and forgetting no 
one in her desire to be seen by everybody.  At the same time she 
continued chatting.

"It's her son Lucy's got in tow!  He's charming in his uniform.  
That's why she's looking so grand, of course!  You know she's afraid 
of him and that she passes herself off as an actress.  Poor young 
man, I pity him all the same!  He seems quite unsuspicious."

"Bah," muttered Philippe, laughing, "she'll be able to find him an 
heiress in the country when she likes."

Nana was silent, for she had just noticed the Tricon amid the thick 
of the carriages.  Having arrived in a cab, whence she could not see 
anything, the Tricon had quietly mounted the coach box.  And there, 
straightening up her tall figure, with her noble face enshrined in 
its long curls, she dominated the crowd as though enthroned amid her 
feminine subjects.  All the latter smiled discreetly at her while 
she, in her superiority, pretended not to know them.  She wasn't 
there for business purposes: she was watching the races for the love 
of the thing, as became a frantic gambler with a passion for 
horseflesh.

"Dear me, there's that idiot La Faloise!" said Georges suddenly.

It was a surprise to them all.  Nana did not recognize her La 
Faloise, for since he had come into his inheritance he had grown 
extraordinarily up to date.  He wore a low collar and was clad in a 
cloth of delicate hue which fitted close to his meager shoulders.  
His hair was in little bandeaux, and he affected a weary kind of 
swagger, a soft tone of voice and slang words and phrases which he 
did not take the trouble to finish.

"But he's quite the thing!" declared Nana in perfect enchantment.

Gaga and Clarisse had called La Faloise and were throwing themselves 
at him in their efforts to regain his allegiance, but he left them 
immediately, rolling off in a chaffing, disdainful manner.  Nana 
dazzled him.  He rushed up to her and stood on the carriage step, 
and when she twitted him about Gaga he murmured:

"Oh dear, no!  We've seen the last of the old lot!  Mustn't play her 
off on me any more.  And then, you know, it's you now, Juliet mine!"

He had put his hand to his heart.  Nana laughed a good deal at this 
exceedingly sudden out-of-door declaration.  She continued:

"I say, that's not what I'm after.  You're making me forget that I 
want to lay wagers.  Georges, you see that bookmaker down there, a 
great red-faced man with curly hair?  He's got a dirty blackguard 
expression which I like.  You're to go and choose--Oh, I say, what 
can one choose?"

"I'm not a patriotic soul--oh dear, no!" La Faloise blurted out.  
"I'm all for the Englishman.  It will be ripping if the Englishman 
gains!  The French may go to Jericho!"

Nana was scandalized.  Presently the merits of the several horses 
began to be discussed, and La Faloise, wishing to be thought very 
much in the swim, spoke of them all as sorry jades.  Frangipane, 
Baron Verdier's horse, was by The Truth out of Lenore.  A big bay 
horse he was, who would certainly have stood a chance if they hadn't 
let him get foundered during training.  As to Valerio II from the 
Corbreuse stable, he wasn't ready yet; he'd had the colic in April.  
Oh yes, they were keeping that dark, but he was sure of it, on his 
honor!  In the end he advised Nana to choose Hazard, the most 
defective of the lot, a horse nobody would have anything to do with.  
Hazard, by jingo--such superb lines and such an action!  That horse 
was going to astonish the people.

"No," said Nana, "I'm going to put ten louis on Lusignan and five on 
Boum."

La Faloise burst forth at once:

"But, my dear girl, Boum's all rot!  Don't choose him!  Gasc himself 
is chucking up backing his own horse.  And your Lusignan--never!  
Why, it's all humbug!  By Lamb and Princess--just think!  By Lamb 
and Princess--no, by Jove!  All too short in the legs!"

He was choking.  Philippe pointed out that, notwithstanding this, 
Lusignan had won the Prix des Cars and the Grande Poule des 
Produits.  But the other ran on again.  What did that prove?  
Nothing at all.  On the contrary, one ought to distrust him.  And 
besides, Gresham rode Lusignan; well then, let them jolly well dry 
up!  Gresham had bad luck; he would never get to the post.

And from one end of the field to the other the discussion raging in 
Nana's landau seemed to spread and increase.  Voices were raised in 
a scream; the passion for gambling filled the air, set faces glowing 
and arms waving excitedly, while the bookmakers, perched on their 
conveyances, shouted odds and jotted down amounts right furiously.  
Yet these were only the small fry of the betting world; the big bets 
were made in the weighing enclosure.  Here, then, raged the keen 
contest of people with light purses who risked their five-franc 
pieces and displayed infinite covetousness for the sake of a 
possible gain of a few louis.  In a word, the battle would be 
between Spirit and Lusignan.  Englishmen, plainly recognizable as 
such, were strolling about among the various groups.  They were 
quite at home; their faces were fiery with excitement; they were 
afready triumphant.  Bramah, a horse belonging to Lord Reading, had 
gained the Grand Prix the previous year, and this had been a defeat 
over which hearts were still bleeding.  This year it would be 
terrible if France were beaten anew.  Accordingly all the ladies 
were wild with national pride.  The Vandeuvres stable became the 
rampart of their honor, and Lusignan was pushed and defended and 
applauded exceedingly.  Gaga, Blanche, Caroline and the rest betted 
on Lusignan.  Lucy Stewart abstained from this on account of her 
son, but it was bruited abroad that Rose Mignon had commissioned 
Labordette to risk two hundred louis for her.  The Tricon, as she 
sat alone next her driver, waited till the last moment.  Very cool, 
indeed, amid all these disputes, very far above the ever-increasing 
uproar in which horses' names kept recurring and lively Parisian 
phrases mingled with guttural English exclamations, she sat 
listening and taking notes majestically.

"And Nana?" said Georges.  "Does no one want her?"

Indeed, nobody was asking for the filly; she was not even being 
mentioned.  The outsider of the Vandeuvres's stud was swamped by 
Lusignan's popularity.  But La Faloise flung his arms up, crying:

"I've an inspiration.  I'll bet a louis on Nana."

"Bravo!  I bet a couple," said Georges.

"And I three," added Philippe.

And they mounted up and up, bidding against one another good-
humoredly and naming prices as though they had been haggling over 
Nana at an auction.  La Faloise said he would cover her with gold.  
Besides, everybody was to be made to back her; they would go and 
pick up backers.  But as the three young men were darting off to 
propagandize, Nana shouted after them:

"You know I don't want to have anything to do with her; I don't for 
the world!  Georges, ten louis on Lusignan and five on Valerio II."

Meanwhile they had started fairly off, and she watched them gaily as 
they slipped between wheels, ducked under horses' heads and scoured 
the whole field.  The moment they recognized anyone in a carriage 
they rushed up and urged Nana's claims.  And there were great bursts 
of laughter among the crowd when sometimes they turned back, 
triumphantly signaling amounts with their fingers, while the young 
woman stood and waved her sunshade.  Nevertheless, they made poor 
enough work of it.  Some men let themselves be persuaded; Steiner, 
for instance, ventured three louis, for the sight of Nana stirred 
him.  But the women refused point-blank.  "Thanks," they said; "to 
lose for a certainty!"  Besides, they were in no hurry to work for 
the benefit of a dirty wench who was overwhelming them all with her 
four white horses, her postilions and her outrageous assumption of 
side.  Gaga and Clarisse looked exceedingly prim and asked La 
Faloise whether he was jolly well making fun of them.  When Georges 
boldly presented himself before the Mignons' carriage Rose turned 
her head away in the most marked manner and did not answer him.  One 
must be a pretty foul sort to let one's name be given to a horse!  
Mignon, on the contrary, followed the young man's movements with a 
look of amusement and declared that the women always brought luck.

"Well?" queried Nana when the young men returned after a prolonged 
visit to the bookmakers.

"The odds are forty to one against you," said La Faloise.

"What's that?  Forty to one!" she cried, astounded.  "They were 
fifty to one against me.  What's happened?"

Labordette had just then reappeared.  The course was being cleared, 
and the pealing of a bell announced the first race.  Amid the 
expectant murmur of the bystanders she questioned him about this 
sudden rise in her value.  But he replied evasively; doubtless a 
demand for her had arisen.  She had to content herself with this 
explanation.  Moreover, Labordette announced with a preoccupied 
expression that Vandeuvres was coming if he could get away.

The race was ending unnoticed; people were all waiting for the Grand 
Prix to be run--when a storm burst over the Hippodrome.  For some 
minutes past the sun had disappeared, and a wan twilight had 
darkened over the multitude.  Then the wind rose, and there ensued a 
sudden deluge.  Huge drops, perfect sheets of water, fell.  There 
was a momentary confusion, and people shouted and joked and swore, 
while those on foot scampered madly off to find refuge under the 
canvas of the drinking booths.  In the carriages the women did their 
best to shelter themselves, grasping their sunshades with both 
hands, while the bewildered footmen ran to the hoods.  But the 
shower was already nearly over, and the sun began shining 
brilliantly through escaping clouds of fine rain.  A blue cleft 
opened in the stormy mass, which was blown off over the Bois, and 
the skies seemed to smile again and to set the women laughing in a 
reassured manner, while amid the snorting of horses and the disarray 
and agitation of the drenched multitude that was shaking itself dry 
a broad flush of golden light lit up the field, still dripping and 
glittering with crystal drops.

"Oh, that poor, dear Louiset!" said Nana.  "Are you very drenched, 
my darling?"

The little thing silently allowed his hands to be wiped.  The young 
woman had taken out her handkerchief.  Then she dabbed it over 
Bijou, who was trembling more violently than ever.  It would not 
matter in the least; there were a few drops on the white satin of 
her dress, but she didn't care a pin for them.  The bouquets, 
refreshed by the rain, glowed like snow, and she smelled one 
ecstatically, drenching her lips in it as though it were wet with 
dew.

Meanwhile the burst of rain had suddenly filled the stands.  Nana 
looked at them through her field glasses.  At that distance you 
could only distinguish a compact, confused mass of people, heaped 
up, as it were, on the ascending ranges of steps, a dark background 
relieved by light dots which were human faces.  The sunlight 
filtered in through openings near the roof at each end of the stand 
and detached and illumined portions of the seated multitude, where 
the ladies' dresses seemed to lose their distinguishing colors.  But 
Nana was especially amused by the ladies whom the shower had driven 
from the rows of chairs ranged on the sand at the base of the 
stands.  As courtesans were absolutely forbidden to enter the 
enclosure, she began making exceedingly bitter remarks about all the 
fashionable women therein assembled.  She thought them fearfully 
dressed up, and such guys!

There was a rumor that the empress was entering the little central 
stand, a pavilion built like a chalet, with a wide balcony furnished 
with red armchairs.

"Why, there he is!" said Georges.  "I didn't think he was on duty 
this week."

The stiff and solemn form of the Count Muffat had appeared behind 
the empress.  Thereupon the young men jested and were sorry that 
Satin wasn't there to go and dig him in the ribs.  But Nana's field 
glass focused the head of the Prince of Scots in the imperial stand.

"Gracious, it's Charles!" she cried.

She thought him stouter than formerly.  In eighteen months he had 
broadened, and with that she entered into particulars.  Oh yes, he 
was a big, solidly built fellow!

All round her in the ladies' carriages they were whispering that the 
count had given her up.  It was quite a long story.  Since he had 
been making himself noticeable, the Tuileries had grown scandalized 
at the chamberlain's conduct.  Whereupon, in order ro retain his 
position, he had recently broken it off with Nana.  La Faloise 
bluntly reported this account of matters to the young woman and, 
addressing her as his Juliet, again offered himself.  But she 
laughed merrily and remarked:

"It's idiotic!  You won't know him; I've only to say, 'Come here,' 
for him to chuck up everything."

For some seconds past she had been examining the Countess Sabine and 
Estelle.  Daguenet was still at their side.  Fauchery had just 
arrived and was disturbing the people round him in his desire to 
make his bow to them.  He, too, stayed smilingly beside them.  After 
that Nana pointed with disdainful action at the stands and 
continued:

"Then, you know, those people don't fetch me any longer now!  I know 
'em too well.  You should see 'em behind scenes.  No more honor!  
It's all up with honor!  Filth belowstairs, filth abovestairs, filth 
everywhere.  That's why I won't be bothered about 'em!"

And with a comprehensive gesture she took in everybody, from the 
grooms leading the horses on to the course to the sovereign lady 
busy chatting with with Charles, a prince and a dirty fellow to 
boot.

"Bravo, Nana!  Awfully smart, Nana!" cried La Faloise 
enthusiastically.

The tolling of a bell was lost in the wind; the races continued.  
The Prix d'Ispahan had just been run for and Berlingot, a horse 
belonging to the Mechain stable, had won.  Nana recalled Labordette 
in order to obtain news of the hundred louis, but he burst out 
laughing and refused to let her know the horses he had chosen for 
her, so as not to disturb the luck, as he phrased it.  Her money was 
well placed; she would see that all in good time.  And when she 
confessed her bets to him and told him how she had put ten louis on 
Lusignan and five on Valerio II, he shrugged his shoulders, as who 
should say that women did stupid things whatever happened.  His 
action surprised her; she was quite at sea.

Just then the field grew more animated than before.  Open-air 
lunches were arranged in the interval before the Grand Prix.  There 
was much eating and more drinking in all directions, on the grass, 
on the high seats of the four-in-hands and mail coaches, in the 
victorias, the broughams, the landaus.  There was a universal spread 
of cold viands and a fine disorderly display of champagne baskets 
which footmen kept handing down out of the coach boots.  Corks came 
out with feeble pops, which the wind drowned.  There was an 
interchange of jests, and the sound of breaking glasses imparted a 
note of discord to the high-strung gaiety of the scene.  Gaga and 
Clarisse, together with Blanche, were making a serious repast, for 
they were eating sandwiches on the carriage rug with which they had 
been covering their knees.  Louise Violaine had got down from her 
basket carriage and had joined Caroline Hequet.  On the turf at 
their feet some gentlemen had instituted a drinking bar, whither 
Tatan, Maria, Simonne and the rest came to refresh themselves, while 
high in air and close at hand bottles were being emptied on Lea de 
Horn's mail coach, and, with infinite bravado and gesticulation, a 
whole band were making themselves tipsy in the sunshine, above the 
heads of the crowd.  Soon, however, there was an especially large 
crowd by Nana's landau.  She had risen to her feet and had set 
herself to pour out glasses of champagne for the men who came to pay 
her their respects.  Francois, one of the footmen, was passing up 
the bottles while La Faloise, trying hard to imitate a coster's 
accents, kept pattering away:

"'Ere y're, given away, given away!  There's some for everybody!"

"Do be still, dear boy," Nana ended by saying.  "We look like a set 
of tumblers."

She thought him very droll and was greatly entertained.  At one 
moment she conceived the idea of sending Georges with a glass of 
champagne to Rose Mignon, who was affecting temperance.  Henri and 
Charles were bored to distraction; they would have been glad of some 
champagne, the poor little fellows.  But Georges drank the glassful, 
for he feared an argument.  Then Nana remembered Louiset, who was 
sitting forgotten behind her.  Maybe he was thirsty, and she forced 
him to take a drop or two of wine, which made him cough dreadfully.

"'Ere y'are, 'ere y'are, gemmen!" La Faloise reiterated.  "It don't 
cost two sous; it don't cost one.  We give it away."

But Nana broke in with an exclamation:

"Gracious, there's Bordenave down there!  Call him.  Oh, run, 
please, please do!"

It was indeed Bordenave.  He was strolling about with his hands 
behind his back, wearing a hat that looked rusty in the sunlight and 
a greasy frock coat that was glossy at the seams.  It was Bordenave 
shattered by bankruptcy, yet furious despite all reverses, a 
Bordenave who flaunted his misery among all the fine folks with the 
hardihood becoming a man ever ready to take Dame Fortune by storm.

"The deuce, how smart we are!" he said when Nana extended her hand 
to him like the good-natured wench she was.

Presently, after emptying a glass of champagne, he gave vent to the 
followmg profoundly regretful phrase:

"Ah, if only I were a woman!  But, by God, that's nothing!  Would 
you like to go on the stage again?  I've a notion: I'll hire the 
Gaite, and we'll gobble up Paris between us.  You certainly owe it 
me, eh?"

And he lingered, grumbling, beside her, though glad to see her 
again; for, he said, that confounded Nana was balm to his feelings.  
Yes, it was balm to them merely to exist in her presence!  She was 
his daughter; she was blood of his blood!

The circle increased, for now La Faloise was filling glasses, and 
Georges and Philippe were picking up friends.  A stealthy impulse 
was gradually bringing in the whole field.  Nana would fling 
everyone a laughing smile or an amusing phrase.  The groups of 
tipplers were drawing near, and all the champagne scattered over the 
place was moving in her direction.  Soon there was only one noisy 
crowd, and that was round her landau, where she queened it among 
outstretched glasses, her yellow hair floating on the breeze and her 
snowy face bathed in the sunshine.  Then by way of a finishing touch 
and to make the other women, who were mad at her triumph, simply 
perish of envy, she lifted a brimming glass on high and assumed her 
old pose as Venus Victrix.

But somebody touched her shoulder, and she was surprised, on turning 
round, to see Mignon on the seat.  She vanished from view an instant 
and sat herself down beside him, for he had come to communicate a 
matter of importance.  Mignon had everywhere declared that it was 
ridiculous of his wife to bear Nana a grudge; he thought her 
attitude stupid and useless.

"Look here, my dear," he whispered.  "Be careful: don't madden Rose 
too much.  You understand, I think it best to warn you.  Yes, she's 
got a weapon in store, and as she's never forgiven you the Petite 
Duchesse business--"

"A weapon," said Nana; "what's that blooming well got to do with 
me?"

"Just listen: it's a letter she must have found in Fauchery's 
pocket, a letter written to that screw Fauchery by the Countess 
Muffat.  And, by Jove, it's clear the whole story's in it.  Well 
then, Rose wants to send the letter to the count so as to be 
revenged on him and on you."

"What the deuce has that got to do with me?" Nana repeated.  "It's a 
funny business.  So the whole story about Fauchery's in it!  Very 
well, so much the better; the woman has been exasperating me!  We 
shall have a good laugh!"

"No, I don't wish it," Mignon briskly rejoined.  "There'll be a 
pretty scandal!  Besides, we've got nothing to gain."

He paused, fearing lest he should say too much, while she loudly 
averred that she was most certainly not going to get a chaste woman 
into trouble.

But when he still insisted on his refusal she looked steadily at 
him.  Doubtless he was afraid of seeing Fauchery again introduced 
into his family in case he broke with the countess.  While avenging 
her own wrongs, Rose was anxious for that to happen, since she still 
felt a kindness toward the journalist.  And Nana waxed meditative 
and thought of M. Venot's call, and a plan began to take shape in 
her brain, while Mignon was doing his best to talk her over.

"Let's suppose that Rose sends the letter, eh?  There's food for 
scandal: you're mixed up in the business, and people say you're the 
cause of it all.  Then to begin with, the count separates from his 
wife."

"Why should he?" she said.  "On the contrary--"

She broke off, in her turn.  There was no need for her to think 
aloud.  So in order to be rid of Mignon she looked as though she 
entered into his view of the case, and when he advised her to give 
Rose some proof of her submission--to pay her a short visit on the 
racecourse, for instance, where everybody would see her--she replied 
that she would see about it, that she would think the matter over.

A commotion caused her to stand up again.  On the course the horses 
were coming in amid a sudden blast of wind.  The prize given by the 
city of Paris had just been run for, and Cornemuse had gained it.  
Now the Grand Prix was about to be run, and the fever of the crowd 
increased, and they were tortured by anxiety and stamped and swayed 
as though they wanted to make the minutes fly faster.  At this 
ultimate moment the betting world was surprised and startled by the 
continued shortening of the odds against Nana, the outsider of the 
Vandeuvres stables.  Gentlemen kept returning every few moments with 
a new quotation: the betting was thirty to one against Nana; it was 
twenty-five to one against Nana, then twenty to one, then fifteen to 
one.  No one could understand it.  A filly beaten on all the 
racecourses!  A filly which that same morning no single sportsman 
would take at fifty to one against!  What did this sudden madness 
betoken?  Some laughed at it and spoke of the pretty doing awaiting 
the duffers who were being taken in by the joke.  Others looked 
serious and uneasy and sniffed out something ugly under it all.  
Perhaps there was a "deal" in the offing.  Allusion was made to 
well-known stories about the robberies which are winked at on 
racecourses, but on this occasion the great name of Vandeuvres put a 
stop to all such accusations, and the skeptics in the end prevailed 
when they prophesied that Nana would come in last of all.

"Who's riding Nana?" queried La Faloise.

Just then the real Nana reappeared, whereat the gentlemen lent his 
question an indecent meaning and burst into an uproarious fit of 
laughter.  Nana bowed.

"Price is up," she replied.

And with that the discussion began again.  Price was an English 
celebrity.  Why had Vandeuvres got this jockey to come over, seeing 
that Gresham ordinarily rode Nana?  Besides, they were astonished to 
see him confiding Lusignan to this man Gresham, who, according to La 
Faloise, never got a place.  But all these remarks were swallowed up 
in jokes, contradictions and an extraordinarily noisy confusion of 
opinions.  In order to kill time the company once more set 
themselves to drain bottles of champagne.  Presently a whisper ran 
round, and the different groups opened outward.  It was Vandeuvres.  
Nana affected vexation.

"Dear me, you're a nice fellow to come at this time of day!  Why, 
I'm burning to see the enclosure."

"Well, come along then," he said; "there's still time.  You'll take 
a stroll round with me.  I just happen to have a permit for a lady 
about me."

And he led her off on his arm while she enjoyed the jealous glances 
with which Lucy, Caroline and the others followed her.  The young 
Hugons and La Faloise remained in the landau behind her retreating 
figure and continued to do the honors of her champagne.  She shouted 
to them that she would return immediately.

But Vandeuvres caught sight of Labordette and called him, and there 
was an interchange of brief sentences.

"You've scraped everything up?"

"Yes."

"To what amount?"

"Fifteen hundred louis--pretty well all over the place."

As Nana was visibly listening, and that with much curiosity, they 
held their tongues.  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?  What a set those betting men are!  
When I've got the favorite they all throw themselves upon him, and 
there's no chance for me.  After that, when an outsider's asked for, 
they give tongue and yell as though they were being skinned."

"You ought to tell me what's going to happen--I've made my bets," 
she reioined.  "Has Nana a chance?"

A sudden, unreasonable burst of anger overpowered him.

"Won't you deuced well let me be, eh?  Every horse has a chance.  
The odds are shortening because, by Jove, people have taken the 
horse.  Who, I don't know.  I should prefer leaving you if you must 
needs badger me with your idiotic questions."

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:

"Oh, by God, it's me; it's me.  Oh, by God, what luck!"

And, scarce knowing how to give expression to her overwhelming joy, 
she hugged and kissed Louiset, whom she now discovered high in the 
air on Bordenave's shoulder.

"Three minutes and fourteen seconds," said the latter as he put his 
watch back in his pocket.

Nana kept hearing her name; the whole plain was echoing it back to 
her.  Her people were applauding her while she towered above them in 
the sunlight, in the splendor of her starry hair and white-and-sky-
blue dress.  Labordette, as he made off, had just announced to her a 
gain of two thousand louis, for he had put her fifty on Nana at 
forty to one.  But the money stirred her less than this unforeseen 
victory, the fame of which made her queen of Paris.  All the other 
ladies were losers.  With a raging movement Rose Mignon had snapped 
her sunshade, and Caroline Hequet and Clarisse and Simonne--nay, 
Lucy Stewart herself, despite the presence of her son--were swearing 
low in their exasperation at that great wench's luck, while the 
Tricon, who had made the sign of the cross at both start and finish, 
straightened up her tall form above them, went into an ecstasy over 
her intuition and damned Nana admiringly as became an experienced 
matron.

Meanwhile round the landau the crush of men increased.  The band of 
Nana's immediate followers had made a fierce uproar, and now 
Georges, choking with emotion, continued shouting all by himself in 
breaking tones.  As the champagne had given out, Philippe, taking 
the footmen with him, had run to the wine bars.  Nana's court was 
growing and growing, and her present triumph caused many loiterers 
to join her.  Indeed, that movement which had made her carriage a 
center of attraction to the whole field was now ending in an 
apotheosis, and Queen Venus was enthroned amid suddenly maddened 
subjects.  Bordenave, behind her, was muttering oaths, for he 
yearned to her as a father.  Steiner himself had been reconquered--
he had deserted Simonne and had hoisted himself upon one of Nana's 
carriage steps.  When the champagne had arrived, when she lifted her 
brimming glass, such applause burst forth, and "Nana!  Nana!  Nana!" 
was so loudly repeated that the crowd looked round in astonishment 
for the filly, nor could any tell whether it was the horse or the 
woman that filled all hearts.

While this was going on Mignon came hastening up in defiance of 
Rose's terrible frown.  That confounded girl simply maddened him, 
and he wanted to kiss her.  Then after imprinting a paternal salute 
on both her cheeks:

"What bothers me," he said, "is that now Rose is certainly going to 
send the letter.  She's raging, too, fearfully."

"So much the better!  It'll do my business for me!" Nana let slip.

But noting his utter astonishment, she hastily continued:

"No, no, what am I saying?  Indeed, I don't rightly know what I'm 
saying now!  I'm drunk."

And drunk, indeed, drunk with joy, drunk with sunshine, she still 
raised her glass on high and applauded herself.

"To Nana!  To Nana!" she cried amid a redoubled uproar of laughter 
and bravoes, which little by little overspread the whole Hippodrome.

The races were ending, and the Prix Vaublanc was run for.  Carriages 
began driving off one by one.  Meanwhile, amid much disputing, the 
name of Vandeuvres was again mentioned.  It was quite evident now: 
for two years past Vandeuvres had been preparing his final stroke 
and had accordingly told Gresham to hold Nana in, while he had only 
brought Lusignan forward in order to make play for the filly.  The 
losers were vexed; the winners shrugged their shoulders.  After all, 
wasn't the thing permissible?  An owner was free to run his stud in 
his own way.  Many others had done as he had!  In fact, the majority 
thought Vandeuvres had displayed great skill in raking in all he 
could get about Nana through the agency of friends, a course of 
action which explained the sudden shortening of the odds.  People 
spoke of his having laid two thousand louis on the horse, which, 
supposing the odds to be thirty to one against, gave him twelve 
hundred thousand francs, an amount so vast as to inspire respect and 
to excuse everything.

But other rumors of a very serious nature were being whispered 
about: they issued in the first instance from the enclosure, and the 
men who returned thence were full of exact particulars.  Voices were 
raised; an atrocious scandal began to be openly canvassed.  That 
poor fellow Vandeuvres was done for; he had spoiled his splendid hit 
with a piece of flat stupidity, an idiotic robbery, for he had 
commissioned Marechal, a shady bookmaker, to lay two thousand louis 
on his account against Lusignan, in order thereby to get back his 
thousand and odd openly wagered louis.  It was a miserable business, 
and it proved to be the last rift necessary to the utter breakup of 
his fortune.  The bookmaker being thus warned that the favorite 
would not win, had realized some sixty thousand francs over the 
horse.  Only Labordette, for lack of exact and detailed 
instructions, had just then gone to him to put two hundred louis on 
Nana, which the bookmaker, in his ignorance of the stroke actually 
intended, was still quoting at fifty to one against.  Cleared of one 
hundred thousand francs over the filly and a loser to the tune of 
forty thousand, Marechal, who felt the world crumbling under his 
feet, had suddenly divined the situation when he saw the count and 
Labordette talking together in front of the enclosure just after the 
race was over.  Furious, as became an ex-coachman of the count's, 
and brutally frank as only a cheated man can be, he had just made a 
frightful scene in public, had told the whole story in atrocious 
terms and had thrown everyone into angry excitement.  It was further 
stated that the stewards were about to meet.

Nana, whom Philippe and Georges were whisperingly putting in 
possession of the facts, gave vent to a series of reflections and 
yet ceased not to laugh and drink.  After all, it was quite likely; 
she remembered such things, and then that Marechal had a dirty, 
hangdog look.  Nevertheless, she was still rather doubtful when 
Labordette appeared.  He was very white.

"Well?" she asked in a low voice.

"Bloody well smashed up!" he replied simply.

And he shrugged his shoulders.  That Vandeuvres was a mere child!  
She made a bored little gesture.

That evening at the Bal Mabille Nana obtained a colossal success.  
When toward ten o'clock she made her appearance, the uproar was 
afready formidable.  That classic night of madness had brought 
together all that was young and pleasure loving, and now this smart 
world was wallowing in the coarseness and imbecility of the 
servants' hall.  There was a fierce crush under the festoons of gas 
lamps, and men in evening coats and women in outrageous low-necked 
old toilets, which they did not mind soiling, were howling and 
surging to and fro under the maddening influence of a vast drunken 
fit.  At a distance of thirty paces the brass instruments of the 
orchestra were inaudible.  Nobody was dancing.  Stupid witticisms, 
repeated no one knew why, were going the round of the various 
groups.  People were straining after wit without succeeding in being 
funny.  Seven women, imprisoned in the cloakroom, were crying to be 
set free.  A shallot had been found, put up to auction and knocked 
down at two louis.  Just then Nana arrived, still wearing her blue-
and-white racecourse costume, and amid a thunder of applause the 
shallot was presented to her.  People caught hold of her in her own 
despite, and three gentlemen bore her triumphantly into the garden, 
across ruined grassplots and ravaged masses of greenery.  As the 
bandstand presented an obstacle to her advance, it was taken by 
storm, and chairs and music stands were smashed.  A paternal police 
organized the disorder.

It was only on Tuesday that Nana recovered from the excitements of 
victory.  That morning she was chatting with Mme Lerat, the old lady 
having come in to bring her news of Louiset, whom the open air had 
upset.  A long story, which was occupying the attention of all 
Paris, interested her beyond measure.  Vandeuvres, after being 
warned off all racecourses and posted at the Cercle Imperial on the 
very evening after the disaster, had set fire to his stable on the 
morrow and had burned himself and his horses to death.

"He certainly told me he was going to," the young woman kept saying.  
"That man was a regular maniac!  Oh, how they did frighten me when 
they told me about it yesterday evening!  You see, he might easily 
have murdered me some fine night.  And besides, oughtn't he to have 
given me a hint about his horse?  I should at any rate have made my 
fortune!  He said to Labordette that if I knew about the matter I 
would immediately inform my hairdresser and a whole lot of other 
men.  How polite, eh?  Oh dear, no, I certainly can't grieve much 
for him."

After some reflection she had grown very angry.  Just then 
Labordette came in; he had seen about her bets and was now the 
bearer of some forty thousand francs.  This only added to her bad 
temper, for she ought to have gained a million.  Labordette, who 
during the whole of this episode had been pretending entire 
innocence, abandoned Vandeuvres in decisive terms.  Those old 
families, he opined, were worn out and apt to make a stupid ending.

"Oh dear no!" said Nana.  "It isn't stupid to burn oneself in one's 
stable as he did.  For my part, I think he made a dashing finish; 
but, oh, you know, I'm not defending that story about him and 
Marechal.  It's too silly.  Just to think that Blanche has had the 
cheek to want to lay the blame of it on me!  I said to her: 'Did I 
tell him to steal?'  Don't you think one can ask a man for money 
without urging him to commit crime?  If he had said to me, 'I've got 
nothing left,' I should have said to him, 'All right, let's part.'  
And the matter wouldn't have gone further."

"Just so," said the aunt gravely "When men are obstinate about a 
thing, so much the worse for them!"

"But as to the merry little finish up, oh, that was awfully smart!" 
continued Nana.  "It appears to have been terrible enough to give 
you the shudders!  He sent everybody away and boxed himself up in 
the place with a lot of petroleum.  And it blazed!  You should have 
seen it!  Just think, a great big affair, almost all made of wood 
and stuffed with hay and straw!  The flames simply towered up, and 
the finest part of the business was that the horses didn't want to 
be roasted.  They could be heard plunging, throwing themselves 
against the doors, crying aloud just like human beings.  Yes, people 
haven't got rid of the horror of it yet."

Labordette let a low, incredulous whistle escape him.  For his part, 
he did not believe in the death of Vandeuvres.  Somebody had sworn 
he had seen him escaping through a window.  He had set fire to his 
stable in a fit of aberration, but when it had begun to grow too 
warm it must have sobered him.  A man so besotted about the women 
and so utterly worn out could not possibly die so pluckily.

Nana listened in her disillusionment and could only remark:

"Oh, the poor wretch, it was so beautiful!"



CHAPTER XII


Toward one in the morning, in the great bed of the Venice point 
draperies, Nana and the count lay still awake.  He had returned to 
her that evening after a three days sulking fit.  The room, which 
was dimly illumined by a lamp, seemed to slumber amid a warm, damp 
odor of love, while the furniture, with its white lacquer and silver 
incrustations, loomed vague and wan through the gloom.  A curtain 
had been drawn to, so that the bed lay flooded with shadow.  A sigh 
became audible; then a kiss broke the silence, and Nana, slipping 
off the coverlet, sat for a moment or two, barelegged, on the edge 
of the bed.  The count let his head fall back on the pillow and 
remained in darkness.

"Dearest, you believe in the good God, don't you?" she queried after 
some moments' reflection.  Her face was serious; she had been 
overcome by pious terrors on quitting her lover's arms.

Since morning, indeed, she had been complaining of feeling 
uncomfortable, and all her stupid notions, as she phrased it, 
notions about death and hell, were secretly torturing her.  From 
time to time she had nights such as these, during which childish 
fears and atrocious fancies would thrill her with waking nightmares.  
She continued:

"I say, d'you think I shall go to heaven?"

And with that she shivered, while the count, in his surprise at her 
putting such singular questions at such a moment, felt his old 
religious remorse returning upon him.  Then with her chemise 
slipping from her shoulders and her hair unpinned, she again threw 
herself upon his breast, sobbing and clinging to him as she did so.

"I'm afraid of dying!  I'm afraid of dying!"  He had all the trouble 
in the world to disengage himself.  Indeed, he was himself afraid of 
giving in to the sudden madness of this woman clinging to his body 
in her dread of the Invisible.  Such dread is contagious, and he 
reasoned with her.  Her conduct was perfect--she had only to conduct 
herself well in order one day to merit pardon.  But she shook her 
head.  Doubtless she was doing no one any harm; nay, she was even in 
the constant habit of wearing a medal of the Virgin, which she 
showed to him as it hung by a red thread between her breasts. Only 
it had been foreordained that all unmarried women who held 
conversation with men would go to hell.  Scraps of her catechism 
recurred to her remembrance.  Ah, if one only knew for certain, but, 
alas, one was sure of nothing; nobody ever brought back any 
information, and then, truly, it would be stupid to bother oneself 
about things if the priests were talking foolishness all the time.  
Nevertheless, she religiously kissed her medal, which was still warm 
from contact with her skin, as though by way of charm against death, 
the idea of which filled her with icy horror.  Muffat was obliged to 
accompany her into the dressing room, for she shook at the idea of 
being alone there for one moment, even though she had left the door 
open.  When he had lain down again she still roamed about the room, 
visiting its several corners and starting and shivering at the 
slightest noise.  A mirror stopped her, and as of old she lapsed 
into obvious contemplation of her nakedness.  But the sight of her 
breast, her waist and her thighs only doubled her terror, and she 
ended by feeling with both hands very slowly over the bones of her 
face.

"You're ugly when you're dead," she said in deliberate tones.

And she pressed her cheeks, enlarging her eyes and pushing down her 
jaw, in order to see how she would look.  Thus disfigured, she 
turned toward the count.

"Do look!  My head'll be quite small, it will!"

At this he grew vexed.

"You're mad; come to bed!"

He fancied he saw her in a grave, emaciated by a century of sleep, 
and he joined his hands and stammered a prayer.  It was some time 
ago that the religious sense had reconquered him, and now his daily 
access of faith had again assumed the apoplectic intensity which was 
wont to leave him well-nigh stunned.  The joints of his fingers used 
to crack, and he would repeat without cease these words only: "My 
God, my God, my God!"  It was the cry of his impotence, the cry of 
that sin against which, though his damnation was certain, he felt 
powerless to strive.  When Nana returned she found him hidden 
beneath the bedclothes; he was haggard; he had dug his nails into 
his bosom, and his eyes stared upward as though in search of heaven.  
And with that she started to weep again.  Then they both embraced, 
and their teeth chattered they knew not why, as the same imbecile 
obsession over-mastered them.  They had already passed a similar 
night, but on this occasion the thing was utterly idiotic, as Nana 
declared when she ceased to be frightened.  She suspected something, 
and this caused her to question the count in a prudent sort of way.  
It might be that Rose Mignon had sent the famous letter!  But that 
was not the case; it was sheer fright, nothing more, for he was 
still ignorant whether he was a cuckold or no.

Two days later, after a fresh disappearance, Muffat presented 
himself in the morning, a time of day at which he never came.  He 
was livid; his eyes were red and his whole man still shaken by a 
great internal struggle.  But Zoe, being scared herself, did not 
notice his troubled state.  She had run to meet him and now began 
crying:

"Oh, monsieur, do come in!  Madame nearly died yesterday evening!"

And when he asked for particulars:

"Something it's impossible to believe has happened--a miscarriage, 
monsieur."

Nana had been in the family way for the past three months.  For long 
she had simply thought herself out of sorts, and Dr Boutarel had 
himself been in doubt.  But when afterward he made her a decisive 
announcement, she felt so bored thereby that she did all she 
possibly could to disguise her condition.  Her nervous terrors, her 
dark humors, sprang to some extent from this unfortunate state of 
things, the secret of which she kept very shamefacedly, as became a 
courtesan mother who is obliged to conceal her plight.  The thing 
struck her as a ridiculous accident, which made her appear small in 
her own eyes and would, had it been known, have led people to chaff 
her.

"A poor joke, eh?" she said.  "Bad luck, too, certainly."

She was necessarily very sharp set when she thought her last hour 
had come.  There was no end to her surprise, too; her sexual economy 
seemed to her to have got out of order; it produced children then 
even when one did not want them and when one employed it for quite 
other purposes!  Nature drove her to exasperation; this appearance 
of serious motherhood in a career of pleasure, this gift of life 
amid all the deaths she was spreading around, exasperated her.  Why 
could one not dispose of oneself as fancy dictated, without all this 
fuss?  And whence had this brat come?  She could not even suggest a 
father.  Ah, dear heaven, the man who made him would have a splendid 
notion had he kept him in his own hands, for nobody asked for him; 
he was in everybody's way, and he would certainly not have much 
happiness in life!

Meanwhile Zoe described the catastrophe.

"Madame was seized with colic toward four o'clock.  When she didn't 
come back out of the dressing room I went in and found her lying 
stretched on the floor in a faint.  Yes, monsieur, on the floor in a 
pool of blood, as though she had been murdered.  Then I understood, 
you see.  I was furious; Madame might quite well have confided her 
trouble to me.  As it happened, Monsieur Georges was there, and he 
helped me to lift her up, and directly a miscarriage was mentioned 
he felt ill in his turn!  Oh, it's true I've had the hump since 
yesterday!"

In fact, the house seemed utterly upset.  All the servants were 
galloping upstairs, downstairs and through the rooms.  Georges had 
passed the night on an armchair in the drawing room.  It was he who 
had announced the news to Madame's friends at that hour of the 
evening when Madame was in the habit of receiving.  He had still 
been very pale, and he had told his story very feelingly, and as 
though stupefied.  Steiner, La Faloise, Philippe and others, 
besides, had presented themselves, and at the end of the lad's first 
phrase they burst into exclamations.  The thing was impossible!  It 
must be a farce!  After which they grew serious and gazed with an 
embarrassed expression at her bedroom door.  They shook their heads; 
it was no laughing matter.

Till midnight a dozen gentlemen had stood talking in low voices in 
front of the fireplace.  All were friends; all were deeply exercised 
by the same idea of paternity.  They seemed to be mutually excusing 
themselves, and they looked as confused as if they had done 
something clumsy.  Eventually, however, they put a bold face on the 
matter.  It had nothing to do with them: the fault was hers!  What a 
stunner that Nana was, eh?  One would never have believed her 
capable of such a fake!  And with that they departed one by one, 
walking on tiptoe, as though in a chamber of death where you cannot 
laugh.

"Come up all the same, monsieur," said Zoe to Muffat.  "Madame is 
much better and will see you.  We are expecting the doctor, who 
promised to come back this morning."

The lady's maid had persuaded Georges to go back home to sleep, and 
upstairs in the drawing room only Satin remained.  She lay stretched 
on a divan, smoking a cigarette and scanning the ceiling.  Amid the 
household scare which had followed the accident she had been white 
with rage, had shrugged her shoulders violently and had made 
ferocious remarks.  Accordingly, when Zoe was passing in front of 
her and telling Monsieur that poor, dear Madame had suffered a great 
deal:

"That's right; it'll teach him!" said Satin curtly.

They turned round in surprise, but she had not moved a muscle; her 
eyes were still turned toward the ceiling, and her cigarette was 
still wedged tightly between her lips.

"Dear me, you're charming, you are!" said Zoe.

But Satin sat up, looked savagely at the count and once more hurled 
her remark at him.

"That's right; it'll teach him!"

And she lay down again and blew forth a thin jet of smoke, as though 
she had no interest in present events and were resolved not to 
meddle in any of them.  No, it was all too silly!

Zoe, however, introduced Muffat into the bedroom, where a scent of 
ether lingered amid warm, heavy silence, scarce broken by the dull 
roll of occasional carriages in the Avenue de Villiers.  Nana, 
looking very white on her pillow, was lying awake with wide-open, 
meditative eyes.  She smiled when she saw the count but did not 
move.

"Ah, dear pet!" she slowly murmured.  "I really thought I should 
never see you again."

Then as he leaned forward to kiss her on the hair, she grew tender 
toward him and spoke frankly about the child, as though he were its 
father.

"I never dared tell you; I felt so happy about it!  Oh, I used to 
dream about it; I should have liked to be worthy of you!  And now 
there's nothing left.  Ah well, perhaps that's best.  I don't want 
to bring a stumbling block into your life."

Astounded by this story of paternity, he began stammering vague 
phrases.  He had taken a chair and had sat down by the bed, leaning 
one arm on the coverlet.  Then the young woman noticed his wild 
expression, the blood reddening his eyes, the fever that set his 
lips aquiver.

"What's the matter then?" she asked.  "You're ill too."

"No," he answered with extreme difficulty.

She gazed at him with a profound expression.  Then she signed to Zoe 
to retire, for the latter was lingering round arranging the medicine 
bottles.  And when they were alone she drew him down to her and 
again asked:

"What's the matter with you, darling?  The tears are ready to burst 
from your eyes--I can see that quite well.  Well now, speak out; 
you've come to tell me something."

"No, no, I swear I haven't," he blurted out.  But he was choking 
with suffering, and this sickroom, into which he had suddenly 
entered unawares, so worked on his feelings that he burst out 
sobbing and buried his face in the bedclothes to smother the 
violence of his grief.  Nana understood.  Rose Mignon had most 
assuredly decided to send the letter.  She let him weep for some 
moments, and he was shaken by convulsions so fierce that the bed 
trembled under her.  At length in accents of motherly compassion she 
queried:

"You've had bothers at your home?"

He nodded affirmatively.  She paused anew, and then very low:

"Then you know all?"

He nodded assent.  And a heavy silence fell over the chamber of 
suffering.  The night before, on his return from a party given by 
the empress, he had received the letter Sabine had written her 
lover.  After an atrocious night passed in the meditation of 
vengeance he had gone out in the morning in order to resist a 
longing which prompted him to kill his wife.  Outside, under a 
sudden, sweet influence of a fine June morning, he had lost the 
thread of his thoughts and had come to Nana's, as he always came at 
terrible moments in his life.  There only he gave way to his misery, 
for he felt a cowardly joy at the thought that she would console 
him.

"Now look here, be calm!" the young woman continued, becoming at the 
same time extremely kind.  "I've known it a long time, but it was 
certainly not I that would have opened your eyes.  You remember you 
had your doubts last year, but then things arranged themselves, 
owing to my prudence.  In fact, you wanted proofs.  The deuce, 
you've got one today, and I know it's hard lines.  Nevertheless, you 
must look at the matter quietly: you're not dishonored because it's 
happened."

He had left off weeping.  A sense of shame restrained him from 
saying what he wanted to, although he had long ago slipped into the 
most intimate confessions about his household.  She had to encourage 
him.  Dear me, she was a woman; she could understand everything.  
When in a dull voice he exclaimed:

"You're ill.  What's the good of tiring you?  It was stupid of me to 
have come.  I'm going--"

"No," she answered briskly enough.  "Stay!  Perhaps I shall be able 
to give you some good advice.  Only don't make me talk too much; the 
medical man's forbidden it."

He had ended by rising, and he was now walking up and down the room.  
Then she questioned him:

"Now what are you going to do?

"I'm going to box the man's ears--by heavens, yes!"

She pursed up her lips disapprovingly.

"That's not very wise.  And about your wife?"

"I shall go to law; I've proofs."

"Not at all wise, my dear boy.  It's stupid even.  You know I shall 
never let you do that!"

And in her feeble voice she showed him decisively how useless and 
scandalous a duel and a trial would be.  He would be a nine days' 
newspaper sensation; his whole existence would be at stake, his 
peace of mind, his high situation at court, the honor of his name, 
and all for what?  That he might have the laughers against him.

"What will it matter?" he cried.  "I shall have had my revenge."

"My pet," she said, "in a business of that kind one never has one's 
revenge if one doesn't take it directly."

He paused and stammered.  He was certainly no poltroon, but he felt 
that she was right.  An uneasy feeling was growing momentarily 
stronger within him, a poor, shameful feeling which softened his 
anger now that it was at its hottest.  Moreover, in her frank desire 
to tell him everything, she dealt him a fresh blow.

"And d'you want to know what's annoying you, dearest?  Why, that you 
are deceiving your wife yourself.  You don't sleep away from home 
for nothing, eh?  Your wife must have her suspicions.  Well then, 
how can you blame her?  She'll tell you that you've set her the 
example, and that'll shut you up.  There, now, that's why you're 
stamping about here instead of being at home murdering both of 'em."

Muffat had again sunk down on the chair; he was overwhelmed by these 
home thrusts.  She broke off and took breath, and then in a low 
voice:

"Oh, I'm a wreck!  Do help me sit up a bit.  I keep slipping down, 
and my head's too low."

When he had helped her she sighed and felt more comfortable.  And 
with that she harked back to the subject.  What a pretty sight a 
divorce suit would be!  Couldn't he imagine the advocate of the 
countess amusing Paris with his remarks about Nana?  Everything 
would have come out--her fiasco at the Varietes, her house, her 
manner of life.  Oh dear, no!  She had no wish for all that amount 
of advertising.  Some dirty women might, perhaps, have driven him to 
it for the sake of getting a thundering big advertisement, but she--
she desired his happiness before all else.  She had drawn him down 
toward her and, after passing her arm around his neck, was nursing 
his head close to hers on the edge of the pillow.  And with that she 
whispered softly:

"Listen, my pet, you shall make it up with your wife."

But he rebelled at this.  It could never be!  His heart was nigh 
breaking at the thought; it was too shameful.  Nevertheless, she 
kept tenderly insisting.

"You shall make it up with your wife.  Come, come, you don't want to 
hear all the world saying that I've tempted you away from your home?  
I should have too vile a reputation!  What would people think of me?  
Only swear that you'll always love me, because the moment you go 
with another woman--"

Tears choked her utterance, and he intervened with kisses and said:

"You're beside yourself; it's impossible!"

"Yes, yes," she rejoined, "you must.  But I'll be reasonable.  After 
all, she's your wife, and it isn't as if you were to play me false 
with the firstcomer."

And she continued in this strain, giving him the most excellent 
advice.  She even spoke of God, and the count thought he was 
listening to M. Venot, when that old gentleman endeavored to 
sermonize him out of the grasp of sin.  Nana, however, did not speak 
of breaking it off entirely: she preached indulgent good nature and 
suggested that, as became a dear, nice old fellow, he should divide 
his attentions between his wife and his mistress, so that they would 
all enjoy a quiet life, devoid of any kind of annoyance, something, 
in fact, in the nature of a happy slumber amid the inevitable 
miseries of existence.  Their life would be nowise changed: he would 
still be the little man of her heart.  Only he would come to her a 
bit less often and would give the countess the nights not passed 
with her.  She had got to the end of her strength and left off, 
speaking under her breath:

"After that I shall feel I've done a good action, and you'll love me 
all the more."

Silence reigned.  She had closed her eyes and lay wan upon her 
pillow.  The count was patiently listening to her, not wishing her 
to tire herself.  A whole minute went by before she reopened her 
eyes and murmured:

"Besides, how about the money?  Where would you get the money from 
if you must grow angry and go to law?  Labordette came for the bill 
yesterday.  As for me, I'm out of everything; I have nothing to put 
on now."

Then she shut her eyes again and looked like one dead.  A shadow of 
deep anguish had passed over Muffat's brow.  Under the present 
stroke he had since yesterday forgotten the money troubles from 
which he knew not how to escape.  Despite formal promises to the 
contrary, the bill for a hundred thousand francs had been put in 
circulation after being once renewed, and Labordette, pretending to 
be very miserable about it, threw all the blame on Francis, 
declaring that he would never again mix himself up in such a matter 
with an uneducated man.  It was necessary to pay, for the count 
would never have allowed his signature to be protested.  Then in 
addition to Nana's novel demands, his home expenses were 
extraordinarily confused.  On their return from Les Fondettes the 
countess had suddenly manifested a taste for luxury, a longing for 
worldly pleasures, which was devouring their fortune.  Her ruinous 
caprices began to be talked about.  Their whole household management 
was altered, and five hundred thousand francs were squandered in 
utterly transforming the old house in the Rue Miromesnil.  Then 
there were extravagantly magnificent gowns and large sums 
disappeared, squandered or perhaps given away, without her ever 
dreaming of accounting for them.  Twice Muffat ventured to mention 
this, for he was anxious to know how the money went, but on these 
occasions she had smiled and gazed at him with so singular an 
expression that he dared not interrogate her further for fear of a 
too-unmistakable answer.  If he were taking Daguenet as son-in-law 
as a gift from Nana it was chiefly with the hope of being able to 
reduce Estelle's dower to two hundred thousand francs and of then 
being free to make any arrangements he chose about the remainder 
with a young man who was still rejoicing in this unexpected match.

Nevertheless, for the last week, under the immediate necessity of 
finding Labordette's hundred thousand francs, Muffat had been able 
to hit on but one expedient, from which he recoiled.  This was that 
he should sell the Bordes, a magnificent property valued at half a 
million, which an uncle had recently left the countess.  However, 
her signature was necessary, and she herself, according to the terms 
of the deed, could not alienate the property without the count's 
authorization.  The day before he had indeed resolved to talk to his 
wife about this signature.  And now everything was ruined; at such a 
moment he would never accept of such a compromise.  This reflection 
added bitterness to the frightful disgrace of the adultery.  He 
fully understood what Nana was asking for, since in that ever-
growing self-abandonment  which prompted him to put her in 
possession of all his secrets, he had complained to her of his 
position and had confided to her the tiresome difficulty he was in 
with regard to the signature of the countess.

Nana, however, did not seem to insist.  She did not open her eyes 
again, and, seeing her so pale, he grew frightened and made her 
inhale a little ether.  She gave a sigh and without mentioning 
Daguenet asked him some questions.

"When is the marriage?"

"We sign the contract on Tuesday, in five days' time," he replied.

Then still keeping her eyelids closed, as though she were speaking 
from the darkness and silence of her brain:

"Well then, pet, see to what you've got to do.  As far as I'm 
concerned, I want everybody to be happy and comfortable."

He took her hand and soothed her.  Yes, he would see about it; the 
important thing now was for her to rest.  And the revolt within him 
ceased, for this warm and slumberous sickroom, with its all-
pervading scent of ether, had ended by lulling him into a mere 
longing for happiness and peace.  All his manhood, erewhile maddened 
by wrong, had departed out of him in the neighborhood of that warm 
bed and that suffering woman, whom he was nursing under the 
influence of her feverish heat and of remembered delights.  He 
leaned over her and pressed her in a close embrace, while despite 
her unmoved features her lips wore a delicate, victorious smile.  
But Dr Boutarel made his appearance.

"Well, and how's this dear child?" he said familiarly to Muffat, 
whom he treated as her husband.  "The deuce, but we've made her 
talk!"

The doctor was a good-looking man and still young.  He had a superb 
practice among the gay world, and being very merry by nature and 
ready to laugh and joke in the friendliest way with the demimonde 
ladies with whom, however, he never went farther, he charged very 
high fees and got them paid with the greatest punctuality.  
Moreover, he would put himself out to visit them on the most trivial 
occasions, and Nana, who was always trembling at the fear of death, 
would send and fetch him two or three times a week and would 
anxiously confide to him little infantile ills which he would cure 
to an accompaniment of amusing gossip and harebrained anecdotes.  
The ladies all adored him.  But this time the little ill was 
serious.

Muffat withdrew, deeply moved.  Seeing his poor Nana so very weak, 
his sole feeling was now one of tenderness.  As he was leaving the 
room she motioned him back and gave him her forehead to kiss.  In a 
low voice and with a playfully threatening look she said:

"You know what I've allowed you to do.  Go back to your wife, or 
it's all over and I shall grow angry!"

The Countess Sabine had been anxious that her daughter's wedding 
contract should be signed on a Tuesday in order that the renovated 
house, where the paint was still scarcely dry, might be reopened 
with a grand entertainment.  Five hundred invitations had been 
issued to people in all kinds of sets.  On the morning of the great 
day the upholsterers were still nailing up hangings, and toward nine 
at night, just when the lusters were going to be lit, the architect, 
accompanied by the eager and interested countess, was given his 
final orders.

It was one of those spring festivities which have a delicate charm 
of their own.  Owing to the warmth of the June nights, it had become 
possible to open the two doors of the great drawing room and to 
extend the dancing floor to the sanded paths of the garden.  When 
the first guests arrived and were welcomed at the door by the count 
and the countess they were positively dazzled.  One had only to 
recall to mind the drawing room of the past, through which flitted 
the icy, ghostly presence of the Countess Muffat, that antique room 
full of an atmosphere of religious austerity with its massive First 
Empire mahogany furniture, its yellow velvet hangings, its moldy 
ceiling through which the damp had soaked.  Now from the very 
threshold of the entrance hall mosaics set off with gold were 
glittering under the lights of lofty candelabras, while the marble 
staircase unfurled, as it were, a delicately chiseled balustrade.  
Then, too, the drawing room looked splendid; it was hung with Genoa 
velvet, and a huge decorative design by Boucher covered the ceiling, 
a design for which the architect had paid a hundred thousand francs 
at the sale of the Chateau de Dampierre.  The lusters and the 
crystal ornaments lit up a luxurious display of mirrors and precious 
furniture.  It seemed as though Sabine's long chair, that solitary 
red silk chair, whose soft contours were so marked in the old days, 
had grown and spread till it filled the whole great house with 
voluptuous idleness and a sense of tense enjoyment not less fierce 
and hot than a fire which has been long in burning up.

People were already dancing.  The band, which had been located in 
the garden, in front of one of the open windows, was playing a 
waltz, the supple rhythm of which came softly into the house through 
the intervening night air.  And the garden seemed to spread away and 
away, bathed in transparent shadow and lit by Venetian lamps, while 
in a purple tent pitched on the edge of a lawn a table for 
refreshments had been established.  The waltz, which was none other 
than the quaint, vulgar one in the Blonde Venus, with its laughing, 
blackguard lilt, penetrated the old hotel with sonorous waves of 
sound and sent a feverish thrill along its walls.  It was as though 
some fleshly wind had come up out of the common street and were 
sweeping the relics of a vanished epoch out of the proud old 
dwelling, bearing away the Muffats' past, the age of honor and 
religious faith which had long slumbered beneath the lofty ceilings.

Meanwhile near the hearth, in their accustomed places, the old 
friends of the count's mother were taking refuge.  They felt out of 
their element--they were dazzled and they formed a little group amid 
the slowly invading mob.  Mme du Joncquoy, unable to recognize the 
various rooms, had come in through the dining saloon.  Mme 
Chantereau was gazing with a stupefied expression at the garden, 
which struck her as immense.  Presently there was a sound of low 
voices, and the corner gave vent to all sorts of bitter reflections.

"I declare," murmured Mme Chantereau, "just fancy if the countess 
were to return to life.  Why, can you not imagine her coming in 
among all these crowds of people!  And then there's all this gilding 
and this uproar!  It's scandalous!"

"Sabine's out of her senses," replied Mme du Joncquoy.  "Did you see 
her at the door?  Look, you can catch sight of her here; she's 
wearing all her diamonds."

For a moment or two they stood up in order to take a distant view of 
the count and countess.  Sabine was in a white dress trimmed with 
marvelous English point lace.  She was triumphant in beauty; she 
looked young and gay, and there was a touch of intoxication in her 
continual smile.  Beside her stood Muffat, looking aged and a little 
pale, but he, too, was smiling in his calm and worthy fashion.

"And just to think that he was once master," continued Mme 
Chantereau, "and that not a single rout seat would have come in 
without his permission!  Ah well, she's changed all that; it's her 
house now.  D'you remember when she did not want to do her drawing 
room up again?  She's done up the entire house."

But the ladies grew silent, for Mme de Chezelles was entering the 
room, followed by a band of young men.  She was going into ecstasies 
and marking her approval with a succession of little exclamations.

"Oh, it's delicious, exquisite!  What taste!"  And she shouted back 
to her followers:

"Didn't I say so?  There's nothing equal to these old places when 
one takes them in hand.  They become dazzling!  It's quite in the 
grand seventeenth-century style.  Well, NOW she can receive."

The two old ladies had again sat down and with lowered tones began 
talking about the marriage, which was causing astonishment to a good 
many people.  Estelle had just passed by them.  She was in a pink 
silk gown and was as pale, flat, silent and virginal as ever.  She 
had accepted Daguenet very quietly and now evinced neither joy nor 
sadness, for she was still as cold and white as on those winter 
evenings when she used to put logs on the fire.  This whole fete 
given in her honor, these lights and flowers and tunes, left her 
quite unmoved.

"An adventurer," Mme du Joncquoy was saying.  "For my part, I've 
never seen him."

"Take care, here he is," whispered Mme Chantereau.

Daguenet, who had caught sight of Mme Hugon and her sons, had 
eagerly offered her his arm.  He laughed and was effusively 
affectionate toward her, as though she had had a hand in his sudden 
good fortune.

"Thank you," she said, sitting down near the fireplace.  "You see, 
it's my old corner."

"You know him?" queried Mme du Joncquoy, when Daguenet had gone.  
"Certainly I do--a charming young man.  Georges is very fond of him.  
Oh, they're a most respected family."

And the good lady defended him against the mute hostility which was 
apparent to her.  His father, held in high esteem by Louis Philippe, 
had been a PREFET up to the time of his death.  The son had been a 
little dissipated, perhaps; they said he was ruined, but in any 
case, one of his uncles, who was a great landowner, was bound to 
leave him his fortune.  The ladies, however, shook their heads, 
while Mme Hugon, herself somewhat embarrassed, kept harking back to 
the extreme respectability of his family.  She was very much 
fatigued and complained of her feet.  For some months she had been 
occupying her house in the Rue Richelieu, having, as she said, a 
whole lot of things on hand.  A look of sorrow overshadowed her 
smiling, motherly face.

"Never mind," Mme Chantereau concluded.  "Estelle could have aimed 
at something much better."

There was a flourish.  A quadrille was about to begin, and the crowd 
flowed back to the sides of the drawing room in order to leave the 
floor clear.  Bright dresses flitted by and mingled together amid 
the dark evening coats, while the intense light set jewels flashing 
and white plumes quivering and lilacs and roses gleaming and 
flowering amid the sea of many heads.  It was already very warm, and 
a penetrating perfume was exhaled from light tulles and crumpled 
silks and satins, from which bare shoulders glimmered white, while 
the orchestra played its lively airs.  Through open doors ranges of 
seated ladies were visible in the background of adjoining rooms; 
they flashed a discreet smile; their eyes glowed, and they made 
pretty mouths as the breath of their fans caressed their faces.  And 
guests still kept arriving, and a footman announced their names 
while gentlemen advanced slowly amid the surrounding groups, 
striving to find places for ladies, who hung with difficulty on 
their arms, and stretching forward in quest of some far-off vacant 
armchair.  The house kept filling, and crinolined skirts got jammed 
together with a little rustling sound.  There were corners where an 
amalgam of laces, bunches and puffs would completely bar the way, 
while all the other ladies stood waiting, politely resigned and 
imperturbably graceful, as became people who were made to take part 
in these dazzling crushes.  Meanwhile across the garden couples, who 
had been glad to escape from the close air of the great drawing 
room, were wandering away under the roseate gleam of the Venetian 
lamps, and shadowy dresses kept flitting along the edge of the lawn, 
as though in rhythmic time to the music of the quadrille, which 
sounded sweet and distant behind the trees.

Steiner had just met with Foucarmont and La Faloise, who were 
drinking a glass of champagne in front of the buffet.

"It's beastly smart," said La Faloise as he took a survey of the 
purple tent, which was supported by gilded lances.  "You might fancy 
yourself at the Gingerbread Fair.  That's it--the Gingerbread Fair!"

In these days he continually affected a bantering tone, posing as 
the young man who has abused every mortal thing and now finds 
nothing worth taking seriously.

"How surprised poor Vandeuvres would be if he were to come back," 
murmured Foucarmont.  "You remember how he simply nearly died of 
boredom in front of the fire in there.  Egad, it was no laughing 
matter."

"Vandeuvres--oh, let him be.  He's a gone coon!" La Faloise 
disdainfully rejoined.  "He jolly well choused himself, he did, if 
he thought he could make us sit up with his roast-meat story!  Not a 
soul mentions it now.  Blotted out, done for, buried--that's what's 
the matter with Vandeuvres!  Here's to the next man!"

Then as Steiner shook hands with him:

"You know Nana's just arrived.  Oh, my boys, it was a state entry.  
It was too brilliant for anything!  First of all she kissed the 
countess.  Then when the children came up she gave them her blessing 
and said to Daguenet, 'Listen, Paul, if you go running after the 
girls you'll have to answer for it to me.'  What, d'you mean to say 
you didn't see that?  Oh, it WAS smart.  A success, if you like!"

The other two listened to him, openmouthed, and at last burst out 
laughing.  He was enchanted and thought himself in his best vein.

"You thought it had really happened, eh?  Confound it, since Nana's 
made the match!  Anyway, she's one of the family."

The young Hugons were passing, and Philippe silenced him.  And with 
that they chatted about the marriage from the male point of view.  
Georges was vexed with La Faloise for telling an anecdote.  
Certainly Nana had fubbed off on Muffat one of her old flames as 
son-in-law; only it was not true that she had been to bed with 
Daguenet as lately as yesterday.  Foucarmont made bold to shrug his 
shoulders.  Could anyone ever tell when Nana was in bed with anyone?  
But Georges grew excited and answered with an "I can tell, sir!" 
which set them all laughing.  In a word, as Steiner put it, it was 
all a very funny kettle of fish!

The buffet was gradually invaded by the crowd, and, still keeping 
together, they vacated their positions there.  La Faloise stared 
brazenly at the women as though he believed himself to be Mabille.  
At the end of a garden walk the little band was surprised to find M. 
Venot busily conferring with Daguenet, and with that they indulged 
in some facile pleasantries which made them very merry.  He was 
confessing him, giving him advice about the bridal night!  Presently 
they returned in front of one of the drawing-room doors, within 
which a polka was sending the couples whirling to and fro till they 
seemed to leave a wake behind them among the crowd of men who 
remained standing about.  In the slight puffs of air which came from 
outside the tapers flared up brilliantly, and when a dress floated 
by in time to the rat-tat of the measure, a little gust of wind 
cooled the sparkling heat which streamed down from the lusters.

"Egad, they're not cold in there!" muttered La Faloise.

They blinked after emerging from the mysterious shadows of the 
garden.  Then they pointed out to one another the Marquis de Chouard 
where he stood apart, his tall figure towering over the bare 
shoulders which surrounded him.  His face was pale and very stern, 
and beneath its crown of scant white hair it wore an expression of 
lofty dignity.  Scandalized by Count Muffat's conduct, he had 
publicly broken off all intercourse with him and was by way of never 
again setting foot in the house.  If he had consented to put in an 
appearance that evening it was because his granddaughter had begged 
him to.  But he disapproved of her marriage and had inveighed 
indignantly against the way in which the government classes were 
being disorganized by the shameful compromises engendered by modern 
debauchery.

"Ah, it's the end of all things," Mme du Joncquoy whispered in Mme 
Chantereau's ear as she sat near the fireplace.  "That bad woman has 
bewitched the unfortunate man.  And to think we once knew him such a 
true believer, such a noblehearted gentleman!"

"It appears he is ruining himself," continued Mme Chantereau.  "My 
husband has had a bill of his in his hands.  At present he's living 
in that house in the Avenue de Villiers; all Paris is talking about 
it.  Good heavens!  I don't make excuses for Sabine, but you must 
admit that he gives her infinite cause of complaint, and, dear me, 
if she throws money out of the window, too--"

"She does not only throw money," interrupted the other. "In fact, 
between them, there's no knowing where they'll stop; they'll end in 
the mire, my dear."

But just then a soft voice interrupted them.  It was M. Venot, and 
he had come and seated himself behind them, as though anxious to 
disappear from view.  Bending forward, he murmured:

"Why despair?  God manifests Himself when all seems lost."

He was assisting peacefully at the downfall of the house which he 
erewhile governed.  Since his stay at Les Fondettes he had been 
allowing the madness to increase, for he was very clearly aware of 
his own powerlessness.  He had, indeed, accepted the whole position--
the count's wild passion for Nana, Fauchery's presence, even 
Estelle's marriage with Daguenet.  What did these things matter?  He 
even became more supple and mysterious, for he nursed a hope of 
being able to gain the same mastery over the young as over the 
disunited couple, and he knew that great disorders lead to great 
conversions.  Providence would have its opportunity.

"Our friend," he continued in a low voice, "is always animated by 
the best religious sentiments.  He has given me the sweetest proofs 
of this."

"Well," said Mme du Joncquoy, "he ought first to have made it up 
with his wife."

"Doubtless.  At this moment I have hopes that the reconciliation 
will be shortly effected."

Whereupon the two old ladies questioned him.

But he grew very humble again.  "Heaven," he said, "must be left to 
act."  His whole desire in bringing the count and the countess 
together again was to avoid a public scandal, for religion tolerated 
many faults when the proprieties were respected.

"In fact," resumed Mme du Joncquoy, "you ought to have prevented 
this union with an adventurer."

The little old gentleman assumed an expression of profound 
astonishment.  "You deceive yourself.  Monsieur Daguenet is a young 
man of the greatest merit.  I am acquainted with his thoughts; he is 
anxious to live down the errors of his youth.  Estelle will bring 
him back to the path of virtue, be sure of that."

"Oh, Estelle!" Mme Chantereau murmured disdainfully.  "I believe the 
dear young thing to be incapable of willing anything; she is so 
insignificant!"

This opinion caused M. Venot to smile.  However, he went into no 
explanations about the young bride and, shutting his eyes, as though 
to avoid seeming to take any further interest in the matter, he once 
more lost himself in his corner behind the petticoats.  Mme Hugon, 
though weary and absent-minded, had caught some phrases of the 
conversation, and she now intervened and summed up in her tolerant 
way by remarking to the Marquis de Chouard, who just then bowed to 
her:

"These ladies are too severe.  Existence is so bitter for every one 
of us!  Ought we not to forgive others much, my friend, if we wish 
to merit forgiveness ourselves?"

For some seconds the marquis appeared embarrassed, for he was afraid 
of allusions.  But the good lady wore so sad a smile that he 
recovered almost at once and remarked:

"No, there is no forgiveness for certain faults.  It is by reason of 
this kind of accommodating spirit that a society sinks into the 
abyss of ruin."

The ball had grown still more animated.  A fresh quadrille was 
imparting a slight swaying motion to the drawing-room floor, as 
though the old dwelling had been shaken by the impulse of the dance.  
Now and again amid the wan confusion of heads a woman's face with 
shining eyes and parted lips stood sharply out as it was whirled 
away by the dance, the light of the lusters gleaming on the white 
skin.  Mme du Joncquoy declared that the present proceedings were 
senseless.  It was madness to crowd five hundred people into a room 
which would scarcely contain two hundred.  In fact, why not sign the 
wedding contract on the Place du Carrousel?  This was the outcome of 
the new code of manners, said Mme Chantereau.  In old times these 
solemnities took place in the bosom of the family, but today one 
must have a mob of people; the whole street must be allowed to enter 
quite freely, and there must be a great crush, or else the evening 
seems a chilly affair.  People now advertised their luxury and 
introduced the mere foam on the wave of Parisian society into their 
houses, and accordingly it was only too natural if illicit 
proceedings such as they had been discussing afterward polluted the 
hearth.  The ladies complained that they could not recognize more 
than fifty people.  Where did all this crowd spring from?  Young 
girls with low necks were making a great display of their shoulders.  
A woman had a golden dagger stuck in her chignon, while a bodice 
thickly embroidered with jet beads clothed her in what looked like a 
coat of mail.  People's eyes kept following another lady smilingly, 
so singularly marked were her clinging skirts.  All the luxuriant 
splendor of the departing winter was there--the overtolerant world 
of pleasure, the scratch gathering a hostess can get together after 
a first introduction, the sort of society, in fact, in which great 
names and great shames jostle together in the same fierce quest of 
enjoyment.  The heat was increasing, and amid the overcrowded rooms 
the quadrille unrolled the cadenced symmetry of its figures.

"Very smart--the countess!" La Faloise continued at the garden door.  
"She's ten years younger than her daughter.  By the by, Foucarmont, 
you must decide on a point.  Vandeuvres once bet that she had no 
thighs."

This affectation of cynicism bored the other gentlemen, and 
Foucarmont contented himself by saying:

"Ask your cousin, dear boy.  Here he is."

"Jove, it's a happy thought!" cried La Faloise.  "I bet ten louis 
she has thighs."

Fauchery did indeed come up.  As became a constant inmate of the 
house, he had gone round by the dining room in order to avoid the 
crowded doors.  Rose had taken him up again at the beginning of the 
winter, and he was now dividing himself between the singer and the 
countess, but he was extremely fatigued and did not know how to get 
rid of one of them.  Sabine flattered his vanity, but Rose amused 
him more than she.  Besides, the passion Rose felt was a real one: 
her tenderness for him was marked by a conjugal fidelity which drove 
Mignon to despair.

"Listen, we want some information," said La Faloise as he squeezed 
his cousin's arm.  "You see that lady in white silk?"

Ever since his inheritance had given him a kind of insolent dash of 
manner he had affected to chaff Fauchery, for he had an old grudge 
to satisfy and wanted to be revenged for much bygone raillery, 
dating from the days when he was just fresh from his native 
province.

"Yes, that lady with the lace."

The journalist stood on tiptoe, for as yet he did not understand.

"The countess?" he said at last.

"Exactly, my good friend.  I've bet ten louis--now, has she thighs?"

And he fell a-laughing, for he was delighted to have succeeded in 
snubbing a fellow who had once come heavily down on him for asking 
whether the countess slept with anyone.  But Fauchery, without 
showing the very slightest astonishment, looked fixedly at him.

"Get along, you idiot!" he said finally as he shrugged his 
shoulders.

Then he shook hands with the other gentlemen, while La Faloise, in 
his discomfiture, felt rather uncertain whether he had said 
something funny.  The men chatted.  Since the races the banker and 
Foucarmont had formed part of the set in the Avenue de Villiers.  
Nana was going on much better, and every evening the count came and 
asked how she did.  Meanwhile Fauchery, though he listened, seemed 
preoccupied, for during a quarrel that morning Rose had roundly 
confessed to the sending of the letter.  Oh yes, he might present 
himself at his great lady's house; he would be well received!  After 
long hesitation he had come despite everything--out of sheer 
courage.  But La Faloise's imbecile pleasantry had upset him in 
spite of his apparent tranquillity.

"What's the matter?" asked Philippe.  "You seem in trouble."

"I do?  Not at all.  I've been working: that's why I came so late."

Then coldly, in one of those heroic moods which, although unnoticed, 
are wont to solve the vulgar tragedies of existence:

"All the same, I haven't made my bow to our hosts.  One must be 
civil."

He even ventured on a joke, for he turned to La Faloise and said:

"Eh, you idiot?"

And with that he pushed his way through the crowd.  The valet's full 
voice was no longer shouting out names, but close to the door the 
count and countess were still talking, for they were detained by 
ladies coming in.  At length he joined them, while the gentlemen who 
were still on the garden steps stood on tiptoe so as to watch the 
scene.  Nana, they thought, must have been chattering.

"The count hasn't noticed him," muttered Georges.  "Look out!  He's 
turning round; there, it's done!"

The band had again taken up the waltz in the Blonde Venus.  Fauchery 
had begun by bowing to the countess, who was still smiling in 
ecstatic serenity.  After which he had stood motionless a moment, 
waiting very calmly behind the count's back.  That evening the 
count's deportment was one of lofty gravity: he held his head high, 
as became the official and the great dignitary.  And when at last he 
lowered his gaze in the direction of the journalist he seemed still 
further to emphasize the majesty of his attitude.  For some seconds 
the two men looked at one another.  It was Fauchery who first 
stretched out his hand.  Muffat gave him his.  Their hands remained 
clasped, and the Countess Sabine with downcast eyes stood smiling 
before them, while the waltz continually beat out its mocking, 
vagabond rhythm.

"But the thing's going on wheels!" said Steiner.

"Are their hands glued together?" asked Foucarmont, surprised at 
this prolonged clasp.  A memory he could not forget brought a faint 
glow to Fanchery's pale cheeks, and in his mind's eye he saw the 
property room bathed in greenish twilight and filled with dusty 
bric-a-brac.  And Muffat was there, eggcup in hand, making a clever 
use of his suspicions.  At this moment Muffat was no longer 
suspicious, and the last vestige of his dignity was crumbling in 
ruin.  Fauchery's fears were assuaged, and when he saw the frank 
gaiety of the countess he was seized with a desire to laugh.  The 
thing struck him as comic.

"Aha, here she is at last!" cried La Faloise, who did not abandon a 
jest when he thought it a good one.  "D'you see Nana coming in over 
there?"

"Hold your tongue, do, you idiot!" muttered Philippe.

"But I tell you, it is Nana!  They're playing her waltz for her, by 
Jove!  She's making her entry.  And she takes part in the 
reconciliation, the devil she does!  What?  You don't see her?  
She's squeezing all three of 'em to her heart--my cousin Fauchery, 
my lady cousin and her husband, and she's calling 'em her dear 
kitties.  Oh, those family scenes give me a turn!"

Estelle had come up, and Fauchery complimented her while she stood 
stiffly up in her rose-colored dress, gazing at him with the 
astonished look of a silent child and constantly glancing aside at 
her father and mother.  Daguenet, too, exchanged a hearty shake of 
the hand with the journalist.  Together they made up a smiling 
group, while M. Venot came gliding in behind them.  He gloated over 
them with a beatified expression and seemed to envelop them in his 
pious sweetness, for he rejoiced in these last instances of self-
abandonment which were preparing the means of grace.

But the waltz still beat out its swinging, laughing, voluptuous 
measure; it was like a shrill continuation of the life of pleasure 
which was beating against the old house like a rising tide.  The 
band blew louder trills from their little flutes; their violins sent 
forth more swooning notes.  Beneath the Genoa velvet hangings, the 
gilding and the paintings, the lusters exhaled a living heat and a 
great glow of sunlight, while the crowd of guests, multiplied in the 
surrounding mirrors, seemed to grow and increase as the murmur of 
many voices rose ever louder.  The couples who whirled round the 
drawing room, arm about waist, amid the smiles of the seated ladies, 
still further accentuated the quaking of the floors.  In the garden 
a dull, fiery glow fell from the Venetian lanterns and threw a 
distant reflection of flame over the dark shadows moving in search 
of a breath of air about the walks at its farther end.  And this 
trembling of walls and this red glow of light seemed to betoken a 
great ultimate conflagration in which the fabric of an ancient honor 
was cracking and burning on every side.  The shy early beginnings of 
gaiety, of which Fauchery one April evening had heard the vocal 
expression in the sound of breaking glass, had little by little 
grown bolder, wilder, till they had burst forth in this festival.  
Now the rift was growing; it was crannying the house and announcing 
approaching downfall.  Among drunkards in the slums it is black 
misery, an empty cupboard, which put an end to ruined families; it 
is the madness of drink which empties the wretched beds.  Here the 
waltz tune was sounding the knell of an old race amid the suddenly 
ignited ruins of accumulated wealth, while Nana, although unseen, 
stretched her lithe limbs above the dancers' heads and sent 
corruption through their caste, drenching the hot air with the 
ferment of her exhalations and the vagabond lilt of the music.

On the evening after the celebration of the church marriage Count 
Muffat made his appearance in his wife's bedroom, where he had not 
entered for the last two years.  At first, in her great surprise, 
the countess drew back from him.  But she was still smiling the 
intoxicated smile which she now always wore.  He began stammering in 
extreme embarrassment; whereupon she gave him a short moral lecture.  
However, neither of them risked a decisive explanation.  It was 
religion, they pretended, which required this process of mutual 
forgiveness, and they agreed by a tacit understanding to retain 
their freedom.  Before going to bed, seeing that the countess still 
appeared to hesitate, they had a business conversation, and the 
count was the first to speak of selling the Bordes.  She consented 
at once.  They both stood in great want of money, and they would 
share and share alike.  This completed the reconciliation, and 
Muffat, remorseful though he was, felt veritably relieved.

That very day, as Nana was dozing toward two in the afternoon, Zoe 
made so bold as to knock at her bedroom door.  The curtains were 
drawn to, and a hot breath of wind kept blowing through a window 
into the fresh twilight stillness within.  During these last days 
the young woman had been getting up and about again, but she was 
still somewhat weak.  She opened her eyes and asked:

"Who is it?"

Zoe was about to reply, but Daguenet pushed by her and announced 
himself in person.  Nana forthwith propped herself up on her pillow 
and, dismissing the lady's maid:

"What!  Is that you?" she cried.  "On the day of your marriage?  
What can be the matter?"

Taken aback by the darkness, he stood still in the middle of the 
room.  However, he grew used to it and came forward at last.  He was 
in evening dress and wore a white cravat and gloves.

"Yes, to be sure, it's me!" he said.  "You don't remember?"

No, she remembered nothing, and in his chaffing way he had to offer 
himself frankly to her.

"Come now, here's your commission.  I've brought you the handsel of 
my innocence!"

And with that, as he was now by the bedside, she caught him in her 
bare arms and shook with merry laughter and almost cried, she 
thought it so pretty of him.

"Oh, that Mimi, how funny he is!  He's thought of it after all!  And 
to think I didn't remember it any longer!  So you've slipped off; 
you're just out of church.  Yes, certainly, you've got a scent of 
incense about you.  But kiss me, kiss me!  Oh, harder than that, 
Mimi dear!  Bah!  Perhaps it's for the last time."

In the dim room, where a vague odor of ether still lingered, their 
tender laughter died away suddenly.  The heavy, warm breeze swelled 
the window curtains, and children's voices were audible in the 
avenue without.  Then the lateness of the hour tore them asunder and 
set them joking again.  Daguenet took his departure with his wife 
directly after the breakfast.



CHAPTER XIII


Toward the end of September Count Muffat, who was to dine at Nana's 
that evening, came at nightfall to inform her of a summons to the 
Tuileries.  The lamps in the house had not been lit yet, and the 
servants were laughing uproariously in the kitchen regions as he 
softly mounted the stairs, where the tall windows gleamed in warm 
shadow.  The door of the drawing room up-stairs opened noiselessly.  
A faint pink glow was dying out on the ceiling of the room, and the 
red hangings, the deep divans, the lacquered furniture, with their 
medley of embroidered fabrics and bronzes and china, were already 
sleeping under a slowly creeping flood of shadows, which drowned 
nooks and corners and blotted out the gleam of ivory and the glint 
of gold.  And there in the darkness, on the white surface of a wide, 
outspread petticoat, which alone remained clearly visible, he saw 
Nana lying stretched in the arms of Georges.  Denial in any shape or 
form was impossible.  He gave a choking cry and stood gaping at 
them.

Nana had bounded up, and now she pushed him into the bedroom in 
order to give the lad time to escape.

"Come in," she murmured with reeling senses, "I'll explain."

She was exasperated at being thus surprised.  Never before had she 
given way like this in her own house, in her own drawing room, when 
the doors were open.  It was a long story: Georges and she had had a 
disagreement; he had been mad with jealousy of Philippe, and he had 
sobbed so bitterly on her bosom that she had yielded to him, not 
knowing how else to calm him and really very full of pity for him at 
heart.  And on this solitary occasion, when she had been stupid 
enough to forget herself thus with a little rascal who could not 
even now bring her bouquets of violets, so short did his mother keep 
him--on this solitary occasion the count turned up and came straight 
down on them.  'Gad, she had very bad luck!  That was what one got 
if one was a good-natured wench!

Meanwhile in the bedroom, into which she had pushed Muffat, the 
darkness was complete.  Whereupon after some groping she rang 
furiously and asked for a lamp.  It was Julien's fault too!  If 
there had been a lamp in the drawing room the whole affair would not 
have happened.  It was the stupid nightfall which had got the better 
of her heart.

"I beseech you to be reasonable, my pet," she said when Zoe had 
brought in the lights.

The count, with his hands on his knees, was sitting gazing at the 
floor.  He was stupefied by what he had just seen.  He did not cry 
out in anger.  He only trembled, as though overtaken by some horror 
which was freezing him.  This dumb misery touched the young woman, 
and she tried to comfort him.

"Well, yes, I've done wrong.  It's very bad what I did.  You see I'm 
sorry for my fault.  It makes me grieve very much because it annoys 
you.  Come now, be nice, too, and forgive me."

She had crouched down at his feet and was striving to catch his eye 
with a look of tender submission.  She was fain to know whether he 
was very vexed with her.  Presently, as he gave a long sigh and 
seemed to recover himself, she grew more coaxing and with grave 
kindness of manner added a final reason:

"You see, dearie, you must try and understand how it is: I can't 
refuse it to my poor friends."

The count consented to give way and only insisted that Georges 
should be dismissed once for all.  But all his illusions had 
vanished, and he no longer believed in her sworn fidelity.  Next day 
Nana would deceive him anew, and he only remained her miserable 
possessor in obedience to a cowardly necessity and to terror at the 
thought of living without her.

This was the epoch in her existence when Nana flared upon Paris with 
redoubled splendor.  She loomed larger than heretofore on the 
horizon of vice and swayed the town with her impudently flaunted 
splendor and that contempt of money which made her openly squander 
fortunes.  Her house had become a sort of glowing smithy, where her 
continual desires were the flames and the slightest breath from her 
lips changed gold into fine ashes, which the wind hourly swept away.  
Never had eye beheld such a rage of expenditure.  The great house 
seemed to have been built over a gulf in which men--their worldly 
possessions, their fortunes, their very names--were swallowed up 
without leaving even a handful of dust behind them.  This courtesan, 
who had the tastes of a parrot and gobbled up radishes and burnt 
almonds and pecked at the meat upon her plate, had monthly table 
bills amounting to five thousand francs.  The wildest waste went on 
in the kitchen: the place, metaphorically speaking was one great 
river which stove in cask upon cask of wine and swept great bills 
with it, swollen by three or four successive manipulators.  
Victorine and Francois reigned supreme in the kitchen, whither they 
invited friends.  In addition to these there was quite a little 
tribe of cousins, who were cockered up in their homes with cold 
meats and strong soup.  Julien made the trades-people give him 
commissions, and the glaziers never put up a pane of glass at a cost 
of a franc and a half but he had a franc put down to himself.  
Charles devoured the horses' oats and doubled the amount of their 
provender, reselling at the back door what came in at the carriage 
gate, while amid the general pillage, the sack of the town after the 
storm, Zoe, by dint of cleverness, succeeded in saving appearances 
and covering the thefts of all in order the better to slur over and 
make good her own.  But the household waste was worse than the 
household dishonesty.  Yesterday's food was thrown into the gutter, 
and the collection of provisions in the house was such that the 
servants grew disgusted with it.  The glass was all sticky with 
sugar, and the gas burners flared and flared till the rooms seemed 
ready to explode.  Then, too, there were instances of negligence and 
mischief and sheer accident--of everything, in fact, which can 
hasten the ruin of a house devoured by so many mouths.  Upstairs in 
Madame's quarters destruction raged more fiercely still.  Dresses, 
which cost ten thousand francs and had been twice worn, were sold by 
Zoe; jewels vanished as though they had crumbled deep down in their 
drawers; stupid purchases were made; every novelty of the day was 
brought and left to lie forgotten in some corner the morning after 
or swept up by ragpickers in the street.  She could not see any very 
expensive object without wanting to possess it, and so she 
constantly surrounded herself with the wrecks of bouquets and costly 
knickknacks and was the happier the more her passing fancy cost.  
Nothing remained intact in her hands; she broke everything, and this 
object withered, and that grew dirty in the clasp of her lithe white 
fingers.  A perfect heap of nameless debris, of twisted shreds and 
muddy rags, followed her and marked her passage.  Then amid this 
utter squandering of pocket money cropped up a question about the 
big bills and their settlement.  Twenty thousand francs were due to 
the modiste, thirty thousand to the linen draper, twelve thousand to 
the bootmaker.  Her stable devoured fifty thousand for her, and in 
six months she ran up a bill of a hundred and twenty thousand francs 
at her ladies' tailor.  Though she had not enlarged her scheme of 
expenditure, which Labordette reckoned at four hundred thousand 
francs on an average, she ran up that same year to a million.  She 
was herself stupefied by the amount and was unable to tell whither 
such a sum could have gone.  Heaps upon heaps of men, barrowfuls of 
gold, failed to stop up the hole, which, amid this ruinous luxury, 
continually gaped under the floor of her house.

Meanwhile Nana had cherished her latest caprice.  Once more 
exercised by the notion that her room needed redoing, she fancied 
she had hit on something at last.  The room should be done in velvet 
of the color of tea roses, with silver buttons and golden cords, 
tassels and fringes, and the hangings should be caught up to the 
ceiling after the manner of a tent.  This arrangement ought to be 
both rich and tender, she thought, and would form a splendid 
background to her blonde vermeil-tinted skin.  However, the bedroom 
was only designed to serve as a setting to the bed, which was to be 
a dazzling affair, a prodigy.  Nana meditated a bed such as had 
never before existed; it was to be a throne, an altar, whither Paris 
was to come in order to adore her sovereign nudity.  It was to be 
all in gold and silver beaten work--it should suggest a great piece 
of jewelry with its golden roses climbing on a trelliswork of 
silver.  On the headboard a band of Loves should peep forth laughing 
from amid the flowers, as though they were watching the voluptuous 
dalliance within the shadow of the bed curtains.  Nana had applied 
to Labordette who had brought two goldsmiths to see her.  They were 
already busy with the designs.  The bed would cost fifty thousand 
francs, and Muffat was to give it her as a New Year's present.

What most astonished the young woman was that she was endlessly 
short of money amid a river of gold, the tide of which almost 
enveloped her.  On certain days she was at her wit's end for want of 
ridiculously small sums--sums of only a few louis.  She was driven 
to borrow from Zoe, or she scraped up cash as well as she could on 
her own account.  But before resignedly adopting extreme measures 
she tried her friends and in a joking sort of way got the men to 
give her all they had about them, even down to their coppers.  For 
the last three months she had been emptying Philippe's pockets 
especially, and now on days of passionate enjoyment he never came 
away but he left his purse behind him.  Soon she grew bolder and 
asked him for loans of two hundred francs, three hundred francs--
never more than that--wherewith to pay the interest of bills or to 
stave off outrageous debts.  And Philippe, who in July had been 
appointed paymaster to his regiment, would bring the money the day 
after, apologizing at the same time for not being rich, seeing that 
good Mamma Hugon now treated her sons with singular financial 
severity.  At the close of three months these little oft-renewed 
loans mounted up to a sum of ten thousand francs.  The captain still 
laughed his hearty-sounding laugh, but he was growing visibly 
thinner, and sometimes he seemed absent-minded, and a shade of 
suffering would pass over his face.  But one look from Nana's eyes 
would transfigure him in a sort of sensual ecstasy.  She had a very 
coaxing way with him and would intoxicate him with furtive kisses 
and yield herself to him in sudden fits of self-abandonment, which 
tied him to her apron strings the moment he was able to escape from 
his military duties.

One evening, Nana having announced that her name, too, was Therese 
and that her fete day was the fifteenth of October, the gentlemen 
all sent her presents.  Captain Philippe brought his himself; it was 
an old comfit dish in Dresden china, and it had a gold mount.  He 
found her alone in her dressing room.  She had just emerged from the 
bath, had nothing on save a great red-and-white flannel bathing wrap 
and was very busy examining her presents, which were ranged on a 
table.  She had already broken a rock-crystal flask in her attempts 
to unstopper it.

"Oh, you're too nice!" she said.  "What is it?  Let's have a peep!  
What a baby you are to spend your pennies in little fakements like 
that!"

She scolded him, seeing that he was not rich, but at heart she was 
delighted to see him spending his whole substance for her.  Indeed, 
this was the only proof of love which had power to touch her.  
Meanwhile she was fiddling away at the comfit dish, opening it and 
shutting it in her desire to see how it was made.

"Take care," he murmured, "it's brittle."

But she shrugged her shoulders.  Did he think her as clumsy as a 
street porter?  And all of a sudden the hinge came off between her 
fingers and the lid fell and was broken.  She was stupefied and 
remained gazing at the fragments as she cried:

"Oh, it's smashed!"

Then she burst out laughing.  The fragments lying on the floor 
tickled her fancy.  Her merriment was of the nervous kind, the 
stupid, spiteful laughter of a child who delights in destruction.  
Philippe had a little fit of disgust, for the wretched girl did not 
know what anguish this curio had cost him.  Seeing him thoroughly 
upset, she tried to contain herself.

"Gracious me, it isn't my fault!  It was cracked; those old things 
barely hold together.  Besides, it was the cover!  Didn't you see 
the bound it gave?

And she once more burst into uproarious mirth.

But though he made an effort to the contrary, tears appeared in the 
young man's eyes, and with that she flung her arms tenderly round 
his neck.

"How silly you are!  You know I love you all the same.  If one never 
broke anything the tradesmen would never sell anything.  All that 
sort of thing's made to be broken.  Now look at this fan; it's only 
held together with glue!"

She had snatched up a fan and was dragging at the blades so that the 
silk was torn in two.  This seemed to excite her, and in order to 
show that she scorned the other presents, the moment she had ruined 
his she treated herself to a general massacre, rapping each 
successive object and proving clearly that not one was solid in that 
she had broken them all.  There was a lurid glow in her vacant eyes, 
and her lips, slightly drawn back, displayed her white teeth.  Soon, 
when everything was in fragments, she laughed cheerily again and 
with flushed cheeks beat on the table with the flat of her hands, 
lisping like a naughty little girl:

"All over!  Got no more!  Got no more!"

Then Philippe was overcome by the same mad excitement, and, pushing 
her down, he merrily kissed her bosom.  She abandoned herself to him 
and clung to his shoulders with such gleeful energy that she could 
not remember having enjoyed herself so much for an age past.  
Without letting go of him she said caressingly:

"I say, dearie, you ought certainly to bring me ten louis tomorrow.  
It's a bore, but there's the baker's bill worrying me awfully."

He had grown pale.  Then imprinting a final kiss on her forehead, he 
said simply:

"I'll try."

Silence reigned.  She was dressing, and he stood pressing his 
forehead against the windowpanes.  A minute passed, and he returned 
to her and deliberately continued:

"Nana, you ought to marry me."

This notion straightway so tickled the young woman that she was 
unable to finish tying on her petticoats.

"My poor pet, you're ill!  D'you offer me your hand because I ask 
you for ten louis?  No, never!  I'm too fond of you.  Good gracious, 
what a silly question!"

And as Zoe entered in order to put her boots on, they ceased talking 
of the matter.  The lady's maid at once espied the presents lying 
broken in pieces on the table.  She asked if she should put these 
things away, and, Madame having bidden her get rid of them, she 
carried the whole collection off in the folds of her dress.  In the 
kitchen a sorting-out process began, and Madame's debris were shared 
among the servants.

That day Georges had slipped into the house despite Nana's orders to 
the contrary.  Francois had certainly seen him pass, but the 
servants had now got to laugh among themselves at their good lady's 
embarrassing situations.  He had just slipped as far as the little 
drawing room when his brother's voice stopped him, and, as one 
powerless to tear himself from the door, he overheard everything 
that went on within, the kisses, the offer of marriage.  A feeling 
of horror froze him, and he went away in a state bordering on 
imbecility, feeling as though there were a great void in his brain.  
It was only in his own room above his mother's flat in the Rue 
Richelieu that his heart broke in a storm of furious sobs.  This 
time there could be no doubt about the state of things; a horrible 
picture of Nana in Philippe's arms kept rising before his mind's 
eye.  It struck him in the light of an incest.  When he fancied 
himself calm again the remembrance of it all would return, and in 
fresh access of raging jealousy he would throw himself on the bed, 
biting the coverlet, shouting infamous accusations which maddened 
him the more.  Thus the day passed.  In order to stay shut up in his 
room he spoke of having a sick headache.  But the night proved more 
terrible still; a murder fever shook him amid continual nightmares.  
Had his brother lived in the house, he would have gone and killed 
him with the stab of a knife.  When day returned he tried to reason 
things out.  It was he who ought to die, and he determined to throw 
himself out of the window when an omnibus was passing.  
Nevertheless, he went out toward ten o'clock and traversed Paris, 
wandered up and down on the bridges and at the last moment felt an 
unconquerable desire to see Nana once more.  With one word, perhaps, 
she would save him.  And three o'clock was striking when he entered 
the house in the Avenue de Villiers.

Toward noon a frightful piece of news had simply crushed Mme Hugon.  
Philippe had been in prison since the evening of the previous day, 
accused of having stolen twelve thousand francs from the chest of 
his regiment.  For the last three months he had been withdrawing 
small sums therefrom in the hope of being able to repay them, while 
he had covered the deficit with false money.  Thanks to the 
negligence of the administrative committee, this fraud had been 
constantly successful.  The old lady, humbled utterly by her child's 
crime, had at once cried out in anger against Nana.  She knew 
Philippe's connection with her, and her melancholy had been the 
result of this miserable state of things which kept her in Paris in 
constant dread of some final catastrophe.  But she had never looked 
forward to such shame as this, and now she blamed herself for 
refusing him money, as though such refusal had made her accessory to 
his act.  She sank down on an armchair; her legs were seized with 
paralysis, and she felt herself to be useless, incapable of action 
and destined to stay where she was till she died.  But the sudden 
thought of Georges comforted her.  Georges was still left her; he 
would be able to act, perhaps to save them.  Thereupon, without 
seeking aid of anyone else--for she wished to keep these matters 
shrouded in the bosom of her family--she dragged herself up to the 
next story, her mind possessed by the idea that she still had 
someone to love about her.  But upstairs she found an empty room.  
The porter told her that M. Georges had gone out at an early hour.  
The room was haunted by the ghost of yet another calamity; the bed 
with its gnawed bedclothes bore witness to someone's anguish, and a 
chair which lay amid a heap of clothes on the ground looked like 
something dead.  Georges must be at that woman's house, and so with 
dry eyes and feet that had regained their strength Mme Hugon went 
downstairs.  She wanted her sons; she was starting to reclaim them.

Since morning Nana had been much worried.  First of all it was the 
baker, who at nine o'clock had turned up, bill in hand.  It was a 
wretched story.  He had supplied her with bread to the amount of a 
hundred and thirty-three francs, and despite her royal housekeeping 
she could not pay it.  In his irritation at being put off he had 
presented himself a score of times since the day he had refused 
further credit, and the servants were now espousing his cause.  
Francois kept saying that Madame would never pay him unless he made 
a fine scene; Charles talked of going upstairs, too, in order to get 
an old unpaid straw bill settled, while Victorine advised them to 
wait till some gentleman was with her, when they would get the money 
out of her by suddenly asking for it in the middle of conversation.  
The kitchen was in a savage mood: the tradesmen were all kept posted 
in the course events were taking, and there were gossiping 
consultations, lasting three or four hours on a stretch, during 
which Madame was stripped, plucked and talked over with the wrathful 
eagerness peculiar to an idle, overprosperous servants' hall.  
Julien, the house steward, alone pretended to defend his mistress.  
She was quite the thing, whatever they might say!  And when the 
others accused him of sleeping with her he laughed fatuously, 
thereby driving the cook to distraction, for she would have liked to 
be a man in order to "spit on such women's backsides," so utterly 
would they have disgusted her.  Francois, without informing Madame 
of it, had wickedly posted the baker in the hall, and when she came 
downstairs at lunch time she found herself face to face with him.  
Taking the bill, she told him to return toward three o'clock, 
whereupon, with many foul expressions, he departed, vowing that he 
would have things properly settled and get his money by hook or by 
crook.

Nana made a very bad lunch, for the scene had annoyed her.  Next 
time the man would have to be definitely got rid of.  A dozen times 
she had put his money aside for him, but it had as constantly melted 
away, sometimes in the purchase of flowers, at others in the shape 
of a subscription got up for the benefit of an old gendarme.  
Besides, she was counting on Philippe and was astonished not to see 
him make his appearance with his two hundred francs.  It was regular 
bad luck, seeing that the day before yesterday she had again given 
Satin an outfit, a perfect trousseau this time, some twelve hundred 
francs' worth of dresses and linen, and now she had not a louis 
remaining.

Toward two o'clock, when Nana was beginning to be anxious, 
Labordette presented himself.  He brought with him the designs for 
the bed, and this caused a diversion, a joyful interlude which made 
the young woman forget all her troubles.  She clapped her hands and 
danced about.  After which, her heart bursting wish curiosity, she 
leaned over a table in the drawing room and examined the designs, 
which Labordette proceeded to explain to her.

"You see," he said, "this is the body of the bed.  In the middle 
here there's a bunch of roses in full bloom, and then comes a 
garland of buds and flowers.  The leaves are to be in yellow and the 
roses in red-gold.  And here's the grand design for the bed's head; 
Cupids dancing in a ring on a silver trelliswork."

But Nana interrupted him, for she was beside herself with ecstasy.

"Oh, how funny that little one is, that one in the corner, with his 
behind in the air!  Isn't he now?  And what a sly laugh!  They've 
all got such dirty, wicked eyes!  You know, dear boy, I shall never 
dare play any silly tricks before THEM!"

Her pride was flattered beyond measure.  The goldsmiths had declared 
that no queen anywhere slept in such a bed.  However, a difficulty 
presented itself.  Labordette showed her two designs for the 
footboard, one of which reproduced the pattern on the sides, while 
the other, a subject by itself, represented Night wrapped in her 
veil and discovered by a faun in all her splendid nudity.  He added 
that if she chose this last subject the goldsmiths intended making 
Night in her own likeness.  This idea, the taste of which was rather 
risky, made her grow white with pleasure, and she pictured herself 
as a silver statuette, symbolic of the warm, voluptuous delights of 
darkness.

"Of course you will only sit for the head and shoulders," said 
Labordette.

She looked quietly at him.

"Why?  The moment a work of art's in question I don't mind the 
sculptor that takes my likeness a blooming bit!"

Of course it must be understood that she was choosing the subject.  
But at this he interposed.

"Wait a moment; it's six thousand francs extra."

"It's all the same to me, by Jove!" she cried, bursting into a 
laugh.  "Hasn't my little rough got the rhino?"

Nowadays among her intimates she always spoke thus of Count Muffat, 
and the gentlemen had ceased to inquire after him otherwise.

"Did you see your little rough last night?" they used to say.

"Dear me, I expected to find the little rough here!"

It was a simple familiarity enough, which, nevertheless, she did not 
as yet venture on in his presence.

Labordette began rolling up the designs as he gave the final 
explanations.  The goldsmiths, he said, were undertaking to deliver 
the bed in two months' time, toward the twenty-fifth of December, 
and next week a sculptor would come to make a model for the Night.  
As she accompanied him to the door Nana remembered the baker and 
briskly inquired:

"By the by, you wouldn't be having ten louis about you?"

Labordette made it a solemn rule, which stood him in good stead, 
never to lend women money.  He used always to make the same reply.

"No, my girl, I'm short.  But would you like me to go to your little 
rough?"

She refused; it was useless.  Two days before she had succeeded in 
getting five thousand francs out of the count.  However, she soon 
regretted her discreet conduct, for the moment Labordette had gone 
the baker reappeared, though it was barely half-past two, and with 
many loud oaths roughly settled himself on a bench in the hall.  The 
young woman listened to him from the first floor.  She was pale, and 
it caused her especial pain to hear the servants' secret rejoicings 
swelling up louder and louder till they even reached her ears.  Down 
in the kitchen they were dying of laughter.  The coachman was 
staring across from the other side of the court; Francois was 
crossing the hall without any apparent reason.  Then he hurried off 
to report progress, after sneering knowingly at the baker.  They 
didn't care a damn for Madame; the walls were echoing to their 
laughter, and she felt that she was deserted on all hands and 
despised by the servants' hall, the inmates of which were watching 
her every movement and liberally bespattering her with the filthiest 
of chaff.  Thereupon she abandoned the intention of borrowing the 
hundred and thirty-three francs from Zoe; she already owed the maid 
money, and she was too proud to risk a refusal now.  Such a burst of 
feeling stirred her that she went back into her room, loudly 
remarking:

"Come, come, my girl, don't count on anyone but yourself.  Your 
body's your own property, and it's better to make use of it than to 
let yourself be insulted."

And without even summoning Zoe she dressed herself with feverish 
haste in order to run round to the Tricon's.  In hours of great 
embarrassment this was her last resource.  Much sought after and 
constantly solicited by the old lady, she would refuse or resign 
herself according to her needs, and on these increasingly frequent 
occasions when both ends would not meet in her royally conducted 
establishment, she was sure to find twenty-five louis awaiting her 
at the other's house.  She used to betake herself to the Tricon's 
with the ease born of use, just as the poor go to the pawnshop.

But as she left her own chamber Nana came suddenly upon Georges 
standing in the middle of the drawing room.  Not noticing his waxen 
pallor and the somber fire in his wide eyes, she gave a sigh of 
relief.

"Ah, you've come from your brother."

"No," said the lad, growing yet paler.

At this she gave a despairing shrug.  What did he want?  Why was he 
barring her way?  She was in a hurry--yes, she was.  Then returning 
to where he stood:

"You've no money, have you?"

"No."

"That's true.  How silly of me!  Never a stiver; not even their 
omnibus fares Mamma doesn't wish it!  Oh, what a set of men!"

And she escaped.  But he held her back; he wanted to speak to her.  
She was fairly under way and again declared she had no time, but he 
stopped her with a word.

"Listen, I know you're going to marry my brother."

Gracious!  The thing was too funny!  And she let herself down into a 
chair in order to laugh at her ease.

"Yes," continued the lad, "and I don't wish it.  It's I you're going 
to marry.  That's why I've come."

"Eh, what?  You too?" she cried.  "Why, it's a family disease, is 
it?  No, never!  What a fancy, to be sure!  Have I ever asked you to 
do anything so nasty?  Neither one nor t'other of you!  No, never!"

The lad's face brightened.  Perhaps he had been deceiving himself!  
He continued:

"Then swear to me that you don't go to bed with my brother."

"Oh, you're beginning to bore me now!" said Nana, who had risen with 
renewed impatience.  "It's amusing for a little while, but when I 
tell you I'm in a hurry--I go to bed with your brother if it pleases 
me.  Are you keeping me--are you paymaster here that you insist on 
my making a report?  Yes, I go to bed with your brother."

He had caught hold of her arm and squeezed it hard enough to break 
it as he stuttered:

"Don't say that!  Don't say that!"

With a slight blow she disengaged herself from his grasp.

"He's maltreating me now!  Here's a young ruffian for you!  My 
chicken, you'll leave this jolly sharp.  I used to keep you about 
out of niceness.  Yes, I did!  You may stare!  Did you think I was 
going to be your mamma till I died?  I've got better things to do 
than to bring up brats."

He listened to her stark with anguish, yet in utter submission.  Her 
every word cut him to the heart so sharply that he felt he should 
die.  She did not so much as notice his suffering and continued 
delightedly to revenge herself on him for the annoyance of the 
morning.

"It's like your brother; he's another pretty Johnny, he is!  He 
promised me two hundred francs.  Oh, dear me; yes, I can wait for 
'em.  It isn't his money I care for!  I've not got enough to pay for 
hair oil.  Yes, he's leaving me in a jolly fix!  Look here, d'you 
want to know how matters stand?  Here goes then: it's all owing to 
your brother that I'm going out to earn twenty-five louis with 
another man."

At these words his head spun, and he barred her egress.  He cried; 
he besought her not to go, clasping his hands together and blurting 
out:

"Oh no!  Oh no!"

"I want to, I do," she said.  "Have you the money?"

No, he had not got the money.  He would have given his life to have 
the money!  Never before had he felt so miserable, so useless, so 
very childish.  All his wretched being was shaken with weeping and 
gave proof of such heavy suffering that at last she noticed it and 
grew kind.  She pushed him away softly.

"Come, my pet, let me pass; I must.  Be reasonable.  You're a baby 
boy, and it was very nice for a week, but nowadays I must look after 
my own affairs.  Just think it over a bit.  Now your brother's a 
man; what I'm saying doesn't apply to him.  Oh, please do me a 
favor; it's no good telling him all this.  He needn't know where I'm 
going.  I always let out too much when I'm in a rage."

She began laughing.  Then taking him in her arms and kissing him on 
the forehead:

"Good-by, baby," she said; "it's over, quite over between us; d'you 
understand?  And now I'm off!"

And she left him, and he stood in the middle of the drawing room.  
Her last words rang like the knell of a tocsin in his ears: "It's 
over, quite over!"  And he thought the ground was opening beneath 
his feet.  There was a void in his brain from which the man awaiting 
Nana had disappeared.  Philippe alone remained there in the young 
woman's bare embrace forever and ever.  She did not deny it: she 
loved him, since she wanted to spare him the pain of her infidelity.  
It was over, quite over.  He breathed heavily and gazed round the 
room, suffocating beneath a crushing weight.  Memories kept 
recurring to him one after the other--memories of merry nights at La 
Mignotte, of amorous hours during which he had fancied himself her 
child, of pleasures stolen in this very room.  And now these things 
would never, never recur!  He was too small; he had not grown up 
quickly enough; Philippe was supplanting him because he was a 
bearded man.  So then this was the end; he could not go on living.  
His vicious passion had become transformed into an infinite 
tenderness, a sensual adoration, in which his whole being was 
merged.  Then, too, how was he to forget it all if his brother 
remained--his brother, blood of his blood, a second self, whose 
enjoyment drove him mad with jealousy?  It was the end of all 
things; he wanted to die.

All the doors remained open, as the servants noisily scattered over 
the house after seeing Madame make her exit on foot.  Downstairs on 
the bench in the hall the baker was laughing with Charles and 
Francois.  Zoe came running across the drawing room and seemed 
surprised at sight of Georges.  She asked him if he were waiting for 
Madame.  Yes, he was waiting for her; he had for-gotten to give her 
an answer to a question.  And when he was alone he set to work and 
searched.  Finding nothing else to suit his purpose, he took up in 
the dressing room a pair of very sharply pointed scissors with which 
Nana had a mania for ceaselessly trimming herself, either by 
polishing her skin or cutting off little hairs.  Then for a whole 
hour he waited patiently, his hand in his pocket and his fingers 
tightly clasped round the scissors.

"Here's Madame," said Zoe, returning.  She must have espied her 
through the bedroom window.

There was a sound of people racing through the house, and laughter 
died away and doors were shut.  Georges heard Nana paying the baker 
and speaking in the curtest way.  Then she came upstairs.

"What, you're here still!" she said as she noticed him.  "Aha!  
We're going to grow angry, my good man!"

He followed her as she walked toward her bedroom.

"Nana, will you marry me?"

She shrugged her shoulders.  It was too stupid; she refused to 
answer any more and conceived the idea of slamming the door in his 
face.

"Nana, will you marry me?"

She slammed the door.  He opened it with one hand while he brought 
the other and the scissors out of his pocket.  And with one great 
stab he simply buried them in his breast.

Nana, meanwhile, had felt conscious that something dreadful would 
happen, and she had turned round.  When she saw him stab himself she 
was seized with indignation.

"Oh, what a fool he is!  What a fool!  And with my scissors!  Will 
you leave off, you naughty little rogue?  Oh, my God!  Oh, my God!"

She was scared.  Sinking on his knees, the boy had just given 
himself a second stab, which sent him down at full length on the 
carpet.  He blocked the threshold of the bedroom.  With that Nana 
lost her head utterly and screamed with all her might, for she dared 
not step over his body, which shut her in and prevented her from 
running to seek assistance.

"Zoe!  Zoe!  Come at once.  Make him leave off.  It's getting 
stupid--a child like that!  He's killing himself now!  And in my 
place too!  Did you ever see the like of it?"

He was frightening her.  He was all white, and his eyes were shut.  
There was scarcely any bleeding--only a little blood, a tiny stain 
which was oozing down into his waistcoat.  She was making up her 
mind to step over the body when an apparition sent her starting 
back.  An old lady was advancing through the drawing-room door, 
which remained wide open opposite.  And in her terror she recognized 
Mme Hugon but could not explain her presence.  Still wearing her 
gloves and hat, Nana kept edging backward, and her terror grew so 
great that she sought to defend herself, and in a shaky voice:

"Madame," she cried, "it isn't I; I swear to you it isn't.  He 
wanted to marry me, and I said no, and he's killed himself!"

Slowly Mme Hugon drew near--she was in black, and her face showed 
pale under her white hair.  In the carriage, as she drove thither, 
the thought of Georges had vanished and that of Philippe's misdoing 
had again taken complete possession of her.  It might be that this 
woman could afford explanations to the judges which would touch 
them, and so she conceived the project of begging her to bear 
witness in her son's favor.  Downstairs the doors of the house stood 
open, but as she mounted to the first floor her sick feet failed 
her, and she was hesitating as to which way to go when suddenly 
horror-stricken cries directed her.  Then upstairs she found a man 
lying on the floor with bloodstained shirt.  It was Georges--it was 
her other child.

Nana, in idiotic tones, kept saying:

"He wanted to marry me, and I said no, and he's killed himself."

Uttering no cry, Mme Hugon stooped down.  Yes, it was the other one; 
it was Georges.  The one was brought to dishonor, the other 
murdered!  It caused her no surprise, for her whole life was ruined.  
Kneeling on the carpet, utterly forgetting where she was, noticing 
no one else, she gazed fixedly at her boy's face and listened with 
her hand on his heart.  Then she gave a feeble sigh--she had felt 
the heart beating.  And with that she lifted her head and 
scrutinized the room and the woman and seemed to remember.  A fire 
glowed forth in her vacant eyes, and she looked so great and 
terrible in her silence that Nana trembled as she continued to 
defend herself above the body that divided them.

"I swear it, madame!  If his brother were here he could explain it 
to you."

"His brother has robbed--he is in prison," said the mother in a hard 
voice.

Nana felt a choking sensation.  Why, what was the reason of it all?  
The other had turned thief now!  They were mad in that family!  She 
ceased struggling in self-defense; she seemed no longer mistress in 
her own house and allowed Mme Hugon to give what orders she liked.  
The servants had at last hurried up, and the old lady insisted on 
their carrying the fainting Georges down to her carriage.  She 
preferred killing him rather than letting him remain in that house.  
With an air of stupefaction Nana watched the retreating servants as 
they supported poor, dear Zizi by his legs and shoulders.  The 
mother walked behind them in a state of collapse; she supported 
herself against the furniture; she felt as if all she held dear had 
vanished in the void.  On the landing a sob escaped her; she turned 
and twice ejaculated:

"Oh, but you've done us infinite harm!  You've done us infinite 
harm!"

That was all.  In her stupefaction Nana had sat down; she still wore 
her gloves and her hat.  The house once more lapsed into heavy 
silence; the carriage had driven away, and she sat motionless, not 
knowing what to do next.  her head swimming after all she had gone 
through.  A quarter of an hour later Count Muffat found her thus, 
but at sight of him she relieved her feelings in an overflowing 
current of talk.  She told him all about the sad incident, repeated 
the same details twenty times over, picked up the bloodstained 
scissors in order to imitate Zizi's gesture when he stabbed himself.  
And above all she nursed the idea of proving her own innocence.

"Look you here, dearie, is it my fault?  If you were the judge would 
you condemn me?  I certainly didn't tell Philippe to meddle with the 
till any more than I urged that wretched boy to kill himself.  I've 
been most unfortunate throughout it all.  They come and do stupid 
things in my place; they make me miserable; they treat me like a 
hussy."

And she burst into tears.  A fit of nervous expansiveness rendered 
her soft and doleful, and her immense distress melted her utterly.

"And you, too, look as if you weren't satisfied.  Now do just ask 
Zoe if I'm at all mixed up in it.  Zoe, do speak: explain to 
Monsieur--"

The lady's maid, having brought a towel and a basin of water out of 
the dressing room, had for some moments past been rubbing the carpet 
in order to remove the bloodstains before they dried.

"Oh, monsieur, " she declared, "Madame is utterly miserable!"

Muffat was still stupefied; the tragedy had frozen him, and his 
imagination was full of the mother weeping for her sons.  He knew 
her greatness of heart and pictured her in her widow's weeds, 
withering solitarily away at Les Fondettes.  But Nana grew ever more 
despondent, for now the memory of Zizi lying stretched on the floor, 
with a red hole in his shirt, almost drove her senseless.

"He used to be such a darling, so sweet and caressing.  Oh, you 
know, my pet--I'm sorry if it vexes you--I loved that baby!  I can't 
help saying so; the words must out.  Besides, now it ought not to 
hurt you at all.  He's gone.  You've got what you wanted; you're 
quite certain never to surprise us again."

And this last reflection tortured her with such regret that he ended 
by turning comforter.  Well, well, he said, she ought to be brave; 
she was quite right; it wasn't her fault!  But she checked her 
lamentations of her own accord in order to say:

"Listen, you must run round and bring me news of him.  At once!  I 
wish it!"

He took his hat and went to get news of Georges.  When he returned 
after some three quarters of an hour he saw Nana leaning anxiously 
out of a window, and he shouted up to her from the pavement that the 
lad was not dead and that they even hoped to bring him through.  At 
this she immediately exchanged grief for excess of joy and began to 
sing and dance and vote existence delightful.  Zoe, meanwhile, was 
still dissatisfied with her washing.  She kept looking at the stain, 
and every time she passed it she repeated:

"You know it's not gone yet, madame."

As a matter of fact, the pale red stain kept reappearing on one of 
the white roses in the carpet pattern.  It was as though, on the 
very threshold of the room, a splash of blood were barring the 
doorway.

"Bah!" said the joyous Nana.  "That'l be rubbed out under people's 
feet."

After the following day Count Muffat had likewise forgotten the 
incident.  For a moment or two, when in the cab which drove him to 
the Rue Richelieu, he had busily sworn never to return to that 
woman's house.  Heaven was warning him; the misfortunes of Philippe 
and Georges were, he opined, prophetic of his proper ruin.  But 
neither the sight of Mme Hugon in tears nor that of the boy burning 
with fever had been strong enough to make him keep his vow, and the 
short-lived horror of the situation had only left behind it a sense 
of secret delight at the thought that he was now well quit of a 
rival, the charm of whose youth had always exasperated him.  His 
passion had by this time grown exclusive; it was, indeed, the 
passion of a man who has had no youth.  He loved Nana as one who 
yearned to be her sole possessor, to listen to her, to touch her, to 
be breathed on by her.  His was now a supersensual tenderness, 
verging on pure sentiment; it was an anxious affection and as such 
was jealous of the past and apt at times to dream of a day of 
redemption and pardon received, when both should kneel before God 
the Father.  Every day religion kept regaining its influence over 
him.  He again became a practicing Christian; he confessed himself 
and communicated, while a ceaseless struggle raged within him, and 
remorse redoubled the joys of sin and of repentance.  Afterward, 
when his director gave him leave to spend his passion, he had made a 
habit of this daily perdition and would redeem the same by ecstasies 
of faith, which were full of pious humility.  Very naively he 
offered heaven, by way of expiatory anguish, the abominable torment 
from which he was suffering.  This torment grew and increased, and 
he would climb his Calvary with the deep and solemn feelings of a 
believer, though steeped in a harlot's fierce sensuality.  That 
which made his agony most poignant was this woman's continued 
faithlessness.  He could not share her with others, nor did he 
understand her imbecile caprices.  Undying, unchanging love was what 
he wished for.  However, she had sworn, and he paid her as having 
done so.  But he felt that she was untruthful, incapable of common 
fidelity, apt to yield to friends, to stray passers-by, like a good-
natured animal, born to live minus a shift.

One morning when he saw Foucarmont emerging from her bedroom at an 
unusual hour, he made a scene about it.  But in her weariness of his 
jealousy she grew angry directly.  On several occasions ere that she 
had behaved rather prettily.  Thus the evening when he surprised her 
with Georges she was the first to regain her temper and to confess 
herself in the wrong.  She had loaded him with caresses and dosed 
him with soft speeches in order to make him swallow the business.  
But he had ended by boring her to death with his obstinate refusals 
to understand the feminine nature, and now she was brutal.

"Very well, yes!  I've slept with Foucarmont.  What then?  That's 
flattened you out a bit, my little rough, hasn't it?"

It was the first time she had thrown "my little rough" in his teeth.  
The frank directness of her avowal took his breath away, and when he 
began clenching his fists she marched up to him and looked him full 
in the face.

"We've had enough of this, eh?  If it doesn't suit you you'll do me 
the pleasure of leaving the house.  I don't want you to go yelling 
in my place.  Just you get it into your noodle that I mean to be 
quite free.  When a man pleases me I go to bed with him.  Yes, I do--
that's my way!  And you must make up your mind directly.  Yes or 
no!  If it's no, out you may walk!"

She had gone and opened the door, but he did not leave.  That was 
her way now of binding him more closely to her.  For no reason 
whatever, at the slightest approach to a quarrel she would tell him 
he might stop or go as he liked, and she would accompany her 
permission with a flood of odious reflections.  She said she could 
always find better than he; she had only too many from whom to 
choose; men in any quantity could be picked up in the street, and 
men a good deal smarter, too, whose blood boiled in their veins.  At 
this he would hang his head and wait for those gentler moods when 
she wanted money.  She would then become affectionate, and he would 
forget it all, one night of tender dalliance making up for the 
tortures of a whole week.  His reconciliation with his wife had 
rendered his home unbearable.  Fauchery, having again fallen under 
Rose's dominion, the countess was running madly after other loves.  
She was entering on the forties, that restless, feverish time in the 
life of women, and ever hysterically nervous, she now filled her 
mansion with the maddening whirl of her fashionable life.  Estelle, 
since her marriage, had seen nothing of her father; the undeveloped, 
insignificant girl had suddenly become a woman of iron will, so 
imperious withal that Daguenet trembled in her presence.  In these 
days he accompanied her to mass: he was converted, and he raged 
against his father-in-law for ruining them with a courtesan.  M. 
Venot alone still remained kindly inclined toward the count, for he 
was biding his time.  He had even succeeded in getting into Nana's 
immediate circle.  In fact, he frequented both houses, where you 
encountered his continual smile behind doors.  So Muffat, wretched 
at home, driven out by ennui and shame, still preferred to live in 
the Avenue de Villiers, even though he was abused there.

Soon there was but one question between Nana and the count, and that 
was "money."  One day after having formally promised her ten 
thousand francs he had dared keep his appointment empty handed.  For 
two days past she had been surfeiting him with love, and such a 
breach of faith, such a waste of caresses, made her ragingly 
abusive.  She was white with fury.

"So you've not got the money, eh?  Then go back where you came from, 
my little rough, and look sharp about it!  There's a bloody fool for 
you!  He wanted to kiss me again!  Mark my words--no money, no 
nothing!"

He explained matters; he would be sure to have the money the day 
after tomorrow.  But she interrupted him violently:

"And my bills!  They'll sell me up while Monsieur's playing the 
fool.  Now then, look at yourself.  D'ye think I love you for your 
figure?  A man with a mug like yours has to pay the women who are 
kind enough to put up with him.  By God, if you don't bring me that 
ten thousand francs tonight you shan't even have the tip of my 
little finger to suck.  I mean it!  I shall send you back to your 
wife!"

At night he brought the ten thousand francs.  Nana put up her lips, 
and he took a long kiss which consoled him for the whole day of 
anguish.  What annoyed the young woman was to have him continually 
tied to her apron strings.  She complained to M. Venot, begging him 
to take her little rough off to the countess.  Was their 
reconciliation good for nothing then?  She was sorry she had mixed 
herself up in it, since despite everything he was always at her 
heels.  On the days when, out of anger, she forgot her own interest, 
she swore to play him such a dirty trick that he would never again 
be able to set foot in her place.  But when she slapped her leg and 
yelled at him she might quite as well have spat in his face too: he 
would still have stayed and even thanked her.  Then the rows about 
money matters kept continually recurring.  She demanded money 
savagely; she rowed him over wretched little amounts; she was 
odiously stingy with every minute of her time; she kept fiercely 
informing him that she slept with him for his money, not for any 
other reasons, and that she did not enjoy it a bit, that, in fact, 
she loved another and was awfully unfortunate in needing an idiot of 
his sort!  They did not even want him at court now, and there was 
some talk of requiring him to send in his resignation.  The empress 
had said, "He is too disgusting."  It was true enough.  So Nana 
repeated the phrase by way of closure to all their quarrels.

"Look here!  You disgust me!"

Nowadays she no longer minded her ps and qs; she had regained the 
most perfect freedom.

Every day she did her round of the lake, beginning acquaintanceships 
which ended elsewhere.  Here was the happy hunting ground par 
excellence, where courtesans of the first water spread their nets in 
open daylight and flaunted themselves amid the tolerating smiles and 
brilliant luxury of Paris.  Duchesses pointed her out to one another 
with a passing look--rich shopkeepers' wives copied the fashion of 
her hats.  Sometimes her landau, in its haste to get by, stopped a 
file of puissant turnouts, wherein sat plutocrats able to buy up all 
Europe or Cabinet ministers with plump fingers tight-pressed to the 
throat of France.  She belonged to this Bois society, occupied a 
prominent place in it, was known in every capital and asked about by 
every foreigner.  The splendors of this crowd were enhanced by the 
madness of her profligacy as though it were the very crown, the 
darling passion, of the nation.  Then there were unions of a night, 
continual passages of desire, which she lost count of the morning 
after, and these sent her touring through the grand restaurants and 
on fine days, as often as not, to "Madrid."  The staffs of all the 
embassies visited her, and she, Lucy Stewart, Caroline Hequet and 
Maria Blond would dine in the society of gentlemen who murdered the 
French language and paid to be amused, engaging them by the evening 
with orders to be funny and yet proving so blase and so worn out 
that they never even touched them.  This the ladies called "going on 
a spree," and they would return home happy at having been despised 
and would finish the night in the arms of the lovers of their 
choice.

When she did not actually throw the men at his head Count Muffat 
pretended not to know about all this.  However, he suffered not a 
little from the lesser indignities of their daily life.  The mansion 
in the Avenue de Villiers was becoming a hell, a house full of mad 
people, in which every hour of the day wild disorders led to hateful 
complications.  Nana even fought with her servants.  One moment she 
would be very nice with Charles, the coachman.  When she stopped at 
a restaurant she would send him out beer by the waiter and would 
talk with him from the inside of her carriage when he slanged the 
cabbies at a block in the traffic, for then he struck her as funny 
and cheered her up.  Then the next moment she called him a fool for 
no earthly reason.  She was always squabbling over the straw, the 
bran or the oats; in spite of her love for animals she thought her 
horses ate too much.  Accordingly one day when she was settling up 
she accused the man of robbing her.  At this Charles got in a rage 
and called her a whore right out; his horses, he said, were 
distinctly better than she was, for they did not sleep with 
everybody.  She answered him in the same strain, and the count had 
to separate them and give the coachman the sack.  This was the 
beginning of a rebellion among the servants.  When her diamonds had 
been stolen Victorine and Francois left.  Julien himself 
disappeared, and the tale ran that the master had given him a big 
bribe and had begged him to go, because he slept with the mistress.  
Every week there were new faces in the servants' hall.  Never was 
there such a mess; the house was like a passage down which the scum 
of the registry offices galloped, destroying everything in their 
path.  Zoe alone kept her place; she always looked clean, and her 
only anxiety was how to organize this riot until she had got enough 
together to set up on her own account in fulfillment of a plan she 
had been hatching for some time past.

These, again, were only the anxieties he could own to.  The count 
put up with the stupidity of Mme Maloir, playing bezique with her in 
spite of her musty smell.  He put up with Mme Lerat and her 
encumbrances, with Louiset and the mournful complaints peculiar to a 
child who is being eaten up with the rottenness inherited from some 
unknown father.  But he spent hours worse than these.  One evening 
he had heard Nana angrily telling her maid that a man pretending to 
be rich had just swindled her--a handsome man calling himself an 
American and owning gold mines in his own country, a beast who had 
gone off while she was asleep without giving her a copper and had 
even taken a packet of cigarette papers with him.  The count had 
turned very pale and had gone downstairs again on tiptoe so as not 
to hear more.  But later he had to hear all.  Nana, having been 
smitten with a baritone in a music hall and having been thrown over 
by him, wanted to commit suicide during a fit of sentimental 
melancholia.  She swallowed a glass of water in which she had soaked 
a box of matches.  This made her terribly sick but did not kill her.  
The count had to nurse her and to listen to the whole story of her 
passion, her tearful protests and her oaths never to take to any man 
again.  In her contempt for those swine, as she called them, she 
could not, however, keep her heart free, for she always had some 
sweetheart round her, and her exhausted body inclined to 
incomprehensible fancies and perverse tastes.  As Zoe designedly 
relaxed her efforts the service of the house had got to such a pitch 
that Muffat did not dare to push open a door, to pull a curtain or 
to unclose a cupboard.  The bells did not ring; men lounged about 
everywhere and at every moment knocked up against one another.  He 
had now to cough before entering a room, having almost caught the 
girl hanging round Francis' neck one evening that he had just gone 
out of the dressing room for two minutes to tell the coachman to put 
the horses to, while her hairdresser was finishing her hair.  She 
gave herself up suddenly behind his back; she took her pleasure in 
every corner, quickly, with the first man she met.  Whether she was 
in her chemise or in full dress did not matter.  She would come back 
to the count red all over, happy at having cheated him.  As for him, 
he was plagued to death; it was an abominable infliction!

In his jealous anguish the unhappy man was comparatively at peace 
when he left Nana and Satin alone together.  He would have willingly 
urged her on to this vice, to keep the men off her.  But all was 
spoiled in this direction too.  Nana deceived Satin as she deceived 
the count, going mad over some monstrous fancy or other and picking 
up girls at the street corners.  Coming back in her carriage, she 
would suddenly be taken with a little slut that she saw on the 
pavement; her senses would be captivated, her imagination excited.  
She would take the little slut in with her, pay her and send her 
away again.  Then, disguised as a man, she would go to infamous 
houses and look on at scenes of debauch to while away hours of 
boredom.  And Satin, angry at being thrown over every moment, would 
turn the house topsy-turvy with the most awful scenes.  She had at 
last acquired a complete ascendancy over Nana, who now respected 
her.  Muffat even thought of an alliance between them.  When he 
dared not say anything he let Satin loose.  Twice she had compelled 
her darling to take up with him again, while he showed himself 
obliging and effaced himself in her favor at the least sign.  But 
this good understanding lasted no time, for Satin, too, was a little 
cracked.  On certain days she would very nearly go mad and would 
smash everything, wearing herself out in tempest of love and anger, 
but pretty all the time.  Zoe must have excited her, for the maid 
took her into corners as if she wanted to tell her about her great 
design of which she as yet spoke to no one.

At times, however, Count Muffat was still singularly revolted.  He 
who had tolerated Satin for months, who had at last shut his eyes to 
the unknown herd of men that scampered so quickly through Nana's 
bedroom, became terribly enraged at being deceived by one of his own 
set or even by an acquaintance.  When she confessed her relations 
with Foucarmont he suffered so acutely, he thought the treachery of 
the young man so base, that he wished to insult him and fight a 
duel.  As he did not know where to find seconds for such an affair, 
he went to Labordette.  The latter, astonished, could not help 
laughing.

"A duel about Nana?  But, my dear sir, all Paris would be laughing 
at you.  Men do not fight for Nana; it would be ridiculous."

The count grew very pale and made a violent gesture.

"Then I shall slap his face in the open street."

For an hour Labordette had to argue with him.  A blow would make the 
affair odious; that evening everyone would know the real reason of 
the meeting; it would be in all the papers.  And Labordette always 
finished with the same expression:

"It is impossible; it would be ridiculous."

Each time Muffat heard these words they seemed sharp and keen as a 
stab.  He could not even fight for the woman he loved; people would 
have burst out laughing.  Never before had he felt more bitterly the 
misery of his love, the contrast between his heavy heart and the 
absurdity of this life of pleasure in which it was now lost.  This 
was his last rebellion; he allowed Labordette to convince him, and 
he was present afterward at the procession of his friends, who lived 
there as if at home.

Nana in a few months finished them up greedily, one after the other.  
The growing needs entailed by her luxurious way of life only added 
fuel to her desires, and she finished a man up at one mouthful.  
First she had Foucarmont, who did not last a fortnight.  He was 
thinking of leaving the navy, having saved about thirty thousand 
francs in his ten years of service, which he wished to invest in the 
United States.  His instincts, which were prudential, even miserly, 
were conquered; he gave her everything, even his signature to notes 
of hand, which pledged his future.  When Nana had done with him he 
was penniless.  But then she proved very kind; she advised him to 
return to his ship.  What was the good of getting angry?  Since he 
had no money their relations were no longer possible.  He ought to 
understand that and to be reasonable.  A ruined man fell from her 
hands like a ripe fruit, to rot on the ground by himself.

Then Nana took up with Steiner without disgust but without love.  
She called him a dirty Jew; she seemed to be paying back an old 
grudge, of which she had no distinct recollection.  He was fat; he 
was stupid, and she got him down and took two bites at a time in 
order the quicker to do for this Prussian.  As for him, he had 
thrown Simonne over.  His Bosphorous scheme was getting shaky, and 
Nana hastened the downfall by wild expenses.  For a month he 
struggled on, doing miracles of finance.  He filled Europe with 
posters, advertisements and prospectuses of a colossal scheme and 
obtained money from the most distant climes.  All these savings, the 
pounds of speculators and the pence of the poor, were swallowed up 
in the Avenue de Villiers.  Again he was partner in an ironworks in 
Alsace, where in a small provincial town workmen, blackened with 
coal dust and soaked with sweat, day and night strained their sinews 
and heard their bones crack to satisfy Nana's pleasures.  Like a 
huge fire she devoured all the fruits of stock-exchange swindling 
and the profits of labor.  This time she did for Steiner; she 
brought him to the ground, sucked him dry to the core, left him so 
cleaned out that he was unable to invent a new roguery.  When his 
bank failed he stammered and trembled at the idea of prosecution.  
His bankruptcy had just been published, and the simple mention of 
money flurried him and threw him into a childish embarrassment.  And 
this was he who had played with millions.  One evening at Nana's he 
began to cry and asked her for a loan of a hundred francs wherewith 
to pay his maidservant.  And Nana, much affected and amused at the 
end of this terrible old man who had squeezed Paris for twenty 
years, brought it to him and said:

"I say, I'm giving it you because it seems so funny!  But listen to 
me, my boy, you are too old for me to keep.  You must find something 
else to do."

Then Nana started on La Faloise at once.  He had for some time been 
longing for the honor of being ruined by her in order to put the 
finishing stroke on his smartness.  He needed a woman to launch him 
properly; it was the one thing still lacking.  In two months all 
Paris would be talking of him, and he would see his name in the 
papers.  Six weeks were enough.  His inheritance was in landed 
estate, houses, fields, woods and farms.  He had to sell all, one 
after the other, as quickly as he could.  At every mouthful Nana 
swallowed an acre.  The foliage trembling in the sunshine, the wide 
fields of ripe grain, the vineyards so golden in September, the tall 
grass in which the cows stood knee-deep, all passed through her 
hands as if engulfed by an abyss.  Even fishing rights, a stone 
quarry and three mills disappeared.  Nana passed over them like an 
invading army or one of those swarms of locusts whose flight scours 
a whole province.  The ground was burned up where her little foot 
had rested.  Farm by farm, field by field, she ate up the man's 
patrimony very prettily and quite inattentively, just as she would 
have eaten a box of sweet-meats flung into her lap between 
mealtimes.  There was no harm in it all; they were only sweets!  But 
at last one evening there only remained a single little wood.  She 
swallowed it up disdainfully, as it was hardly worth the trouble 
opening one's mouth for.  La Faloise laughed idiotically and sucked 
the top of his stick.  His debts were crushing him; he was not worth 
a hundred francs a year, and he saw that he would be compelled to go 
back into the country and live with his maniacal uncle.  But that 
did not matter; he had achieved smartness; the Figaro had printed 
his name twice.  And with his meager neck sticking up between the 
turndown points of his collar and his figure squeezed into all too 
short a coat, he would swagger about, uttering his parrotlike 
exclamations and affecting a solemn listlessness suggestive of an 
emotionless marionette.  He so annoyed Nana that she ended by 
beating him.

Meanwhile Fauchery had returned, his cousin having brought him.  
Poor Fauchery had now set up housekeeping.  After having thrown over 
the countess he had fallen into Rose's hands, and she treated him as 
a lawful wife would have done.  Mignon was simply Madame's major-
domo.  Installed as master of the house, the journalist lied to Rose 
and took all sorts of precautions when he deceived her.  He was as 
scrupulous as a good husband, for he really wanted to settle down at 
last.  Nana's triumph consisted in possessing and in ruining a 
newspaper that he had started with a friend's capital.  She did not 
proclaim her triumph; on the contrary, she delighted in treating him 
as a man who had to be circumspect, and when she spoke of Rose it 
was as "poor Rose."  The newspaper kept her in flowers for two 
months.  She took all the provincial subscriptions; in fact, she 
took everything, from the column of news and gossip down to the 
dramatic notes.  Then the editorial staff having been turned topsy-
turvy and the management completely disorganized, she satisfied a 
fanciful caprice and had a winter garden constructed in a corner of 
her house: that carried off all the type.  But then it was no joke 
after all!  When in his delight at the whole business Mignon came to 
see if he could not saddle Fauchery on her altogether, she asked him 
if he took her for a fool.  A penniless fellow living by his 
articles and his plays--not if she knew it!  That sort of 
foolishness might be all very well for a clever woman like her poor, 
dear Rose!  She grew distrustful: she feared some treachery on 
Mignon's part, for he was quite capable of preaching to his wife, 
and so she gave Fauchery his CONGE as he now only paid her in fame.

But she always recollected him kindly.  They had both enjoyed 
themselves so much at the expense of that fool of a La Faloise!  
They would never have thought of seeing each other again if the 
delight of fooling such a perfect idiot had not egged them on!  It 
seemed an awfully good joke to kiss each other under his very nose.  
They cut a regular dash with his coin; they would send him off full 
speed to the other end of Paris in order to be alone and then when 
he came back, they would crack jokes and make allusions he could not 
understand.  One day, urged by the journalist, she bet that she 
would smack his face, and that she did the very same evening and 
went on to harder blows, for she thought it a good joke and was glad 
of the opportunity of showing how cowardly men were.  She called him 
her "slapjack" and would tell him to come and have his smack!  The 
smacks made her hands red, for as yet she was not up to the trick.  
La Faloise laughed in his idiotic, languid way, though his eyes were 
full of tears.  He was delighted at such familiarity; he thought it 
simply stunning.

One night when he had received sundry cuffs and was greatly excited:

"Now, d'you know," he said, "you ought to marry me.  We should be as 
jolly as grigs together, eh?"

This was no empty suggestion.  Seized with a desire to astonish 
Paris, he had been slyly projecting this marriage.  "Nana's husband!  
Wouldn't that sound smart, eh?"  Rather a stunning apotheosis that!  
But Nana gave him a fine snubbing.

"Me marry you!  Lovely!  If such an idea had been tormenting me I 
should have found a husband a long time ago!  And he'd have been a 
man worth twenty of you, my pippin!  I've had a heap of proposals.  
Why, look here, just reckon 'em up with me: Philippe, Georges, 
Foucarmont, Steiner--that makes four, without counting the others 
you don't know.  It's a chorus they all sing.  I can't be nice, but 
they forthwith begin yelling, 'Will you marry me?  Will you marry 
me?'"

She lashed herself up and then burst out in fine indignation:

"Oh dear, no!  I don't want to!  D'you think I'm built that way?  
Just look at me a bit!  Why, I shouldn't be Nana any longer if I 
fastened a man on behind!  And, besides, it's too foul!"

And she spat and hiccuped with disgust, as though she had seen all 
the dirt in the world spread out beneath her.

One evening La Faloise vanished, and a week later it became known 
that he was in the country with an uncle whose mania was botany.  He 
was pasting his specimens for him and stood a chance of marrying a 
very plain, pious cousin.  Nana shed no tears for him.  She simply 
said to the count:

"Eh, little rough, another rival less!  You're chortling today.  But 
he was becoming serious!  He wanted to marry me."

He waxed pale, and she flung her arms round his neck and hung there, 
laughing, while she emphasized every little cruel speech with a 
caress.

"You can't marry Nana!  Isn't that what's fetching you, eh?  When 
they're all bothering me with their marriages you're raging in your 
corner.  It isn't possible; you must wait till your wife kicks the 
bucket.  Oh, if she were only to do that, how you'd come rushing 
round!  How you'd fling yourself on the ground and make your offer 
with all the grand accompaniments--sighs and tears and vows!  
Wouldn't it be nice, darling, eh?"

Her voice had become soft, and she was chaffing him in a ferociously 
wheedling manner.  He was deeply moved and began blushing as he paid 
her back her kisses.  Then she cried:

"By God, to think I should have guessed!  He's thought about it; 
he's waiting for his wife to go off the hooks!  Well, well, that's 
the finishing touch!  Why, he's even a bigger rascal than the 
others!"

Muffat had resigned himself to "the others."  Nowadays he was 
trusting to the last relics of his personal dignity in order to 
remain "Monsieur" among the servants and intimates of the house, the 
man, in fact, who because he gave most was the official lover.  And 
his passion grew fiercer.  He kept his position because he paid for 
it, buying even smiles at a high price.  He was even robbed and he 
never got his money's worth, but a disease seemed to be gnawing his 
vitals from which he could not prevent himself suffering.  Whenever 
he entered Nana's bedroom he was simply content to open the windows 
for a second or two in order to get rid of the odors the others left 
behind them, the essential smells of fair-haired men and dark, the 
smoke of cigars, of which the pungency choked him.  This bedroom was 
becoming a veritable thoroughfare, so continually were boots wiped 
on its threshold.  Yet never a man among them was stopped by the 
bloodstain barring the door.  Zoe was still preoccupied by this 
stain; it was a simple mania with her, for she was a clean girl, and 
it horrified her to see it always there.  Despite everything her 
eyes would wander in its direction, and she now never entered 
Madame's room without remarking:

"It's strange that don't go.  All the same, plenty of folk come in 
this way."

Nana kept receiving the best news from Georges, who was by that time 
already convalescent in his mother's keeping at Les Fondettes, and 
she used always to make the same reply.

"Oh, hang it, time's all that's wanted.  It's apt to grow paler as 
feet cross it."

As a matter of fact, each of the gentlemen, whether Foucarmont, 
Steiner, La Faloise or Fauchery, had borne away some of it on their 
bootsoles.  And Muffat, whom the bloodstain preoccupied as much as 
it did Zoe, kept studying it in his own despite, as though in its 
gradual rosy disappearance he would read the number of men that 
passed.  He secretly dreaded it and always stepped over it out of a 
vivid fear of crushing some live thing, some naked limb lying on the 
floor.

But in the bedroom within he would grow dizzy and intoxicated and 
would forget everything--the mob of men which constantly crossed it, 
the sign of mourning which barred its door.  Outside, in the open 
air of the street, he would weep occasionally out of sheer shame and 
disgust and would vow never to enter the room again.  And the moment 
the portiere had closed behind him he was under the old influence 
once more and felt his whole being melting in the damp warm air of 
the place, felt his flesh penetrated by a perfume, felt himself 
overborne by a voluptuous yearning for self-annihilation.  Pious and 
habituated to ecstatic experiences in sumptuous chapels, he there 
re-encountered precisely the same mystical sensations as when he 
knelt under some painted window and gave way to the intoxication of 
organ music and incense.  Woman swayed him as jealously and 
despotically as the God of wrath, terrifying him, granting him 
moments of delight, which were like spasms in their keenness, in 
return for hours filled with frightful, tormenting visions of hell 
and eternal tortures.  In Nana's presence, as in church, the same 
stammering accents were his, the same prayers and the same fits of 
despair--nay, the same paroxysms of humility peculiar to an accursed 
creature who is crushed down in the mire from whence he has sprung.  
His fleshly desires, his spiritual needs, were confounded together 
and seemed to spring from the obscure depths of his being and to 
bear but one blossom on the tree of his existence.  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.

Then when she felt how humble he was Nana grew tyrannously 
triumphant.  The rage for debasing things was inborn in her.  It did 
not suffice her to destroy them; she must soil them too.  Her 
delicate hands left abominable traces and themselves decomposed 
whatever they had broken.  And he in his imbecile condition lent 
himself to this sort of sport, for he was possessed by vaguely 
remembered stories of saints who were devoured by vermin and in turn 
devoured their own excrements.  When once she had him fast in her 
room and the doors were shut, she treated herself to a man's infamy.  
At first they joked together, and she would deal him light blows and 
impose quaint tasks on him, making him lisp like a child and repeat 
tags of sentences.

"Say as I do: 'tonfound it!  Ickle man damn vell don't tare about 
it!"

He would prove so docile as to reproduce her very accent.

"'Tonfound it!  Ickle man damn vell don't tare about it!"

Or again she would play bear, walking on all fours on her rugs when 
she had only her chemise on and turning round with a growl as though 
she wanted to eat him.  She would even nibble his calves for the fun 
of the thing.  Then, getting up again:

"It's your turn now; try it a bit.  I bet you don't play bear like 
me."

It was still charming enough.  As bear she amused him with her white 
skin and her fell of ruddy hair.  He used to laugh and go down on 
all fours, too, and growl and bite her calves, while she ran from 
him with an affectation of terror.

"Are we beasts, eh?" she would end by saying.  "You've no notion how 
ugly you are, my pet!  Just think if they were to see you like that 
at the Tuileries!"

But ere long these little games were spoiled.  It was not cruelty in 
her case, for she was still a good-natured girl; it was as though a 
passing wind of madness were blowing ever more strongly in the shut-
up bedroom.  A storm of lust disordered their brains, plunged them 
into the delirious imaginations of the flesh.  The old pious terrors 
of their sleepless nights were now transforming themselves into a 
thirst for bestiality, a furious longing to walk on all fours, to 
growl and to bite.  One day when he was playing bear she pushed him 
so roughly that he fell against a piece of furniture, and when she 
saw the lump on his forehead she burst into involuntary laughter.  
After that her experiments on La Faloise having whetted her 
appetite, she treated him like an animal, threshing him and chasing 
him to an accompaniment of kicks.

"Gee up!  Gee up!  You're a horse.  Hoi!  Gee up!  Won't you hurry 
up, you dirty screw?"

At other times he was a dog.  She would throw her scented 
handkerchief to the far end of the room, and he had to run and pick 
it up with his teeth, dragging himself along on hands and knees.

"Fetch it, Caesar!  Look here, I'll give you what for if you don't 
look sharp!  Well done, Caesar!  Good dog!  Nice old fellow!  Now 
behave pretty!"

And he loved his abasement and delighted in being a brute beast.  He 
longed to sink still further and would cry:

"Hit harder.  On, on!  I'm wild!  Hit away!"

She was seized with a whim and insisted on his coming to her one 
night clad in his magnificent chamberlain's costume.  Then how she 
did laugh and make fun of him when she had him there in all his 
glory, with the sword and the cocked hat and the white breeches and 
the full-bottomed coat of red cloth laced with gold and the symbolic 
key hanging on its left-hand skirt.  This key made her especially 
merry and urged her to a wildly fanciful and extremely filthy 
discussion of it.  Laughing without cease and carried away by her 
irreverence for pomp and by the joy of debasing him in the official 
dignity of his costume, she shook him, pinched him, shouted, "Oh, 
get along with ye, Chamberlain!" and ended by an accompaniment of 
swinging kicks behind.  Oh, those kicks!  How heartily she rained 
them on the Tuileries and the majesty of the imperial court, 
throning on high above an abject and trembling people.  That's what 
she thought of society!  That was her revenge!  It was an affair of 
unconscious hereditary spite; it had come to her in her blood.  Then 
when once the chamberlain was undressed and his coat lay spread on 
the ground she shrieked, "Jump!"  And he jumped.  She shrieked, 
"Spit!"  And he spat.  With a shriek she bade him walk on the gold, 
on the eagles, on the decorations, and he walked on them.  Hi tiddly 
hi ti!  Nothing was left; everything was going to pieces.  She 
smashed a chamberlain just as she smashed a flask or a comfit box, 
and she made filth of him, reduced him to a heap of mud at a street 
corner.

Meanwhile the goldsmiths had failed to keep their promise, and the 
bed was not delivered till one day about the middle of January.  
Muffat was just then in Normandy, whither he had gone to sell a last 
stray shred of property, but Nana demanded four thousand francs 
forthwith.  He was not due in Paris till the day after tomorrow, but 
when his business was once finished he hastened his return and 
without even paying a flying visit in the Rue Miromesnil came direct 
to the Avenue de Villiers.  Ten o'clock was striking.  As he had a 
key of a little door opening on the Rue Cardinet, he went up 
unhindered.  In the drawing room upstairs Zoe, who was polishing the 
bronzes, stood dumfounded at sight of him, and not knowing how to 
stop him, she began with much circumlocution, informing him that M. 
Venot, looking utterly beside himself, had been searching for him 
since yesterday and that he had already come twice to beg her to 
send Monsieur to his house if Monsieur arrived at Madame's before 
going home.  Muffat listened to her without in the least 
understanding the meaning of her recital; then he noticed her 
agitation and was seized by a sudden fit of jealousy of which he no 
longer believed himself capable.  He threw himself against the 
bedroom door, for he heard the sound of laughter within.  The door 
gave; its two flaps flew asunder, while Zoe withdrew, shrugging her 
shoulders.  So much the worse for Madame!  As Madame was bidding 
good-by to her wits, she might arrange matters for herself.

And on the threshold Muffat uttered a cry at the sight that was 
presented to his view.

"My God!  My God!"

The renovated bedroom was resplendent in all its royal luxury.  
Silver buttons gleamed like bright stars on the tea-rose velvet of 
the hangings.  These last were of that pink flesh tint which the 
skies assume on fine evenings, when Venus lights her fires on the 
horizon against the clear background of fading daylight.  The golden 
cords and tassels hanging in corners and the gold lace-work 
surrounding the panels were like little flames of ruddy strands of 
loosened hair, and they half covered the wide nakedness of the room 
while they emphasized its pale, voluptuous tone.  Then over against 
him there was the gold and silver bed, which shone in all the fresh 
splendor of its chiseled workmanship, a throne this of sufficient 
extent for Nana to display the outstretched glory of her naked 
limbs, an altar of Byzantine sumptuousness, worthy of the almighty 
puissance of Nana's sex, which at this very hour lay nudely 
displayed there in the religious immodesty befitting an idol of all 
men's worship.  And close by, beneath the snowy reflections of her 
bosom and amid the triumph of the goddess, lay wallowing a shameful, 
decrepit thing, a comic and lamentable ruin, the Marquis de Chouard 
in his nightshirt.

The count had clasped his hands together and, shaken by a paroxysmal 
shuddering, he kept crying:

"My God!  My God!"

It was for the Marquis de Chouard, then, that the golden roses 
flourished on the side panels, those bunches of golden roses 
blooming among the golden leaves; it was for him that the Cupids 
leaned forth with amorous, roguish laughter from their tumbling ring 
on the silver trelliswork.  And it was for him that the faun at his 
feet discovered the nymph sleeping, tired with dalliance, the figure 
of Night copied down to the exaggerated thighs--which caused her to 
be recognizable of all--from Nana's renowned nudity.  Cast there 
like the rag of something human which has been spoiled and dissolved 
by sixty years of debauchery, he suggested the charnelhouse amid the 
glory of the woman's dazzling contours.  Seeing the door open, he 
had risen up, smitten with sudden terror as became an infirm old 
man.  This last night of passion had rendered him imbecile; he was 
entering on his second childhood; and, his speech failing him, he 
remained in an attitude of flight, half-paralyzed, stammering, 
shivering, his nightshirt half up his skeleton shape, and one leg 
outside the clothes, a livid leg, covered with gray hair.  Despite 
her vexation Nana could not keep from laughing.

"Do lie down!  Stuff yourself into the bed," she said, pulling him 
back and burying him under the coverlet, as though he were some 
filthy thing she could not show anyone.

Then she sprang up to shut the door again.  She was decidedly never 
lucky with her little rough.  He was always coming when least 
wanted.  And why had he gone to fetch money in Normandy?  The old 
man had brought her the four thousand francs, and she had let him 
have his will of her.  She pushed back the two flaps of the door and 
shouted:

"So much the worse for you!  It's your fault.  Is that the way to 
come into a room?  I've had enough of this sort of thing.  Ta ta!"

Muffat remained standing before the closed door, thunderstruck by 
what he had just seen.  His shuddering fit increased.  It mounted 
from his feet to his heart and brain.  Then like a tree shaken by a 
mighty wind, he swayed to and fro and dropped on his knees, all his 
muscles giving way under him.  And with hands despairingly 
outstretched he stammered:

"This is more than I can bear, my God!  More than I can bear!"

He had accepted every situation but he could do so no longer.  He 
had come to the end of his strength and was plunged in the dark void 
where man and his reason are together overthrown.  In an extravagant 
access of faith he raised his hands ever higher and higher, 
searching for heaven, calling on God.

"Oh no, I do not desire it!  Oh, come to me, my God!  Succor me; 
nay, let me die sooner!  Oh no, not that man, my God!  It is over; 
take me, carry me away, that I may not see, that I may not feel any 
longer!  Oh, I belong to you, my God!  Our Father which art in 
heaven--"

And burning with faith, he continued his supplication, and an ardent 
prayer escaped from his lips.  But someone touched him on the 
shoulder.  He lifted his eyes; it was M. Venot.  He was surprised to 
find him praying before that closed door.  Then as though God 
Himself had responded to his appeal, the count flung his arms round 
the little old gentleman's neck.  At last he could weep, and he 
burst out sobbing and repeated:

"My brother, my brother."

All his suffering humanity found comfort in that cry.  He drenched 
M. Venot's face with tears; he kissed him, uttering fragmentary 
ejaculations.

"Oh, my brother, how I am suffering!  You only are left me, my 
brother.  Take me away forever--oh, for mercy's sake, take me away!"

Then M. Venot pressed him to his bosom and called him "brother" 
also.  But he had a fresh blow in store for him.  Since yesterday he 
had been searching for him in order to inform him that the Countess 
Sabine, in a supreme fit of moral aberration, had but now taken 
flight with the manager of one of the departments in a large, fancy 
emporium.  It was a fearful scandal, and all Paris was already 
talking about it.  Seeing him under the influence of such religious 
exaltation, Venot felt the opportunity to be favorable and at once 
told him of the meanly tragic shipwreck of his house.  The count was 
not touched thereby.  His wife had gone?  That meant nothing to him; 
they would see what would happen later on.  And again he was seized 
with anguish, and gazing with a look of terror at the door, the 
walls, the ceiling, he continued pouring forth his single 
supplication:

"Take me away!  I cannot bear it any longer!  Take me away!"

M. Venot took him away as though he had been a child.  From that day 
forth Muffat belonged to him entirely; he again became strictly 
attentive to the duties of religion; his life was utterly blasted.  
He had resigned his position as chamberlain out of respect for the 
outraged modesty of the Tuileries, and soon Estelle, his daughter, 
brought an action against him for the recovery of a sum of sixty 
thousand francs, a legacy left her by an aunt to which she ought to 
have succeeded at the time of her marriage.  Ruined and living 
narrowly on the remains of his great fortune, he let himself be 
gradually devoured by the countess, who ate up the husks Nana had 
rejected.  Sabine was indeed ruined by the example of promiscuity 
set her by her husband's intercourse with the wanton.  She was prone 
to every excess and proved the ultimate ruin and destruction of his 
very hearth.  After sundry adventures she had returned home, and he 
had taken her back in a spirit of Christian resignation and 
forgiveness.  She haunted him as his living disgrace, but he grew 
more and more indifferent and at last ceased suffering from these 
distresses.  Heaven took him out of his wife's hands in order to 
restore him to the arms of God, and so the voluptuous pleasures he 
had enjoyed with Nana were prolonged in religious ecstasies, 
accompanied by the old stammering utterances, the old prayers and 
despairs, the old fits of humility which befit an accursed creature 
who is crushed beneath the mire whence he sprang.  In the recesses 
of churches, his knees chilled by the pavement, he would once more 
experience the delights of the past, and his muscles would twitch, 
and his brain would whirl deliciously, and the satisfaction of the 
obscure necessities of his existence would be the same as of old.

On the evening of the final rupture Mignon presented himself at the 
house in the Avenue de Villiers.  He was growing accustomed to 
Fauchery and was beginning at last to find the presence of his 
wife's husband infinitely advantageous to him.  He would leave all 
the little household cares to the journalist and would trust him in 
the active superintendence of all their affairs.  Nay, he devoted 
the money gained by his dramatic successes to the daily expenditure 
of the family, and as, on his part, Fauchery behaved sensibly, 
avoiding ridiculous jealousy and proving not less pliant than Mignon 
himself whenever Rose found her opportunity, the mutual 
understanding between the two men constantly improved.  In fact, 
they were happy in a partnership which was so fertile in all kinds 
of amenities, and they settled down side by side and adopted a 
family arrangement which no longer proved a stumbling block.  The 
whole thing was conducted according to rule; it suited admirably, 
and each man vied with the other in his efforts for the common 
happiness.  That very evening Mignon had come by Fauchery's advice 
to see if he could not steal Nana's lady's maid from her, the 
journalist having formed a high opinion of the woman's extraordinary 
intelligence.  Rose was in despair; for a month past she had been 
falling into the hands of inexperienced girls who were causing her 
continual embarrassment.  When Zoe received him at the door he 
forthwith pushed her into the dining room.  But at his opening 
sentence she smiled.  The thing was impossible, she said, for she 
was leaving Madame and establishing herself on her own account.  And 
she added with an expression of discreet vanity that she was daily 
receiving offers, that the ladies were fighting for her and that Mme 
Blanche would give a pile of gold to have her back.

Zoe was taking the Tricon's establishment.  It was an old project 
and had been long brooded over.  It was her ambition to make her 
fortune thereby, and she was investing all her savings in it.  She 
was full of great ideas and meditated increasing the business and 
hiring a house and combining all the delights within its walls.  It 
was with this in view that she had tried to entice Satin, a little 
pig at that moment dying in hospital, so terribly had she done for 
herself.

Mignon still insisted with his offer and spoke of the risks run in 
the commercial life, but Zoe, without entering into explanations 
about the exact nature of her establishment, smiled a pinched smile, 
as though she had just put a sweetmeat in her mouth, and was content 
to remark:

"Oh, luxuries always pay.  You see, I've been with others quite long 
enough, and now I want others to be with me."

And a fierce look set her lip curling.  At last she would be 
"Madame," and for the sake of earning a few louis all those women 
whose slops she had emptied during the last fifteen years would 
prostrate themselves before her.

Mignon wished to be announced, and Zoe left him for a moment after 
remarking that Madame had passed a miserable day.  He had only been 
at the house once before, and he did not know it at all.  The dining 
room with its Gobelin tapestry, its sideboard and its plate filled 
him with astonishment.  He opened the doors familiarly and visited 
the drawing room and the winter garden, returning thence into the 
hall.  This overwhelming luxury, this gilded furniture, these silks 
and velvets, gradually filled him with such a feeling of admiration 
that it set his heart beating.  When Zoe came down to fetch him she 
offered to show him the other rooms, the dressing room, that is to 
say, and the bedroom.  In the latter Mignon's feelings overcame him; 
he was carried away by them; they filled him with tender enthusiasm.

That damned Nana was simply stupefying him, and yet he thought he 
knew a thing or two.  Amid the downfall of the house and the 
servants' wild, wasteful race to destruction, massed-up riches still 
filled every gaping hole and overtopped every ruined wall.  And 
Mignon, as he viewed this lordly monument of wealth, began recalling 
to mind the various great works he had seen.  Near Marseilles they 
had shown him an aqueduct, the stone arches of which bestrode an 
abyss, a Cyclopean work which cost millions of money and ten years 
of intense labor.  At Cherbourg he had seen the new harbor with its 
enormous works, where hundreds of men sweated in the sun while 
cranes filled the sea with huge squares of rock and built up a wall 
where a workman now and again remained crushed into bloody pulp.  
But all that now struck him as insignificant.  Nana excited him far 
more.  Viewing the fruit of her labors, he once more experienced the 
feelings of respect that had overcome him one festal evening in a 
sugar refiner's chateau.  This chateau had been erected for the 
refiner, and its palatial proportions and royal splendor had been 
paid for by a single material--sugar.  It was with something quite 
different, with a little laughable folly, a little delicate nudity--
it was with this shameful trifle, which is so powerful as to move 
the universe, that she alone, without workmen, without the 
inventions of engineers, had shaken Paris to its foundations and had 
built up a fortune on the bodies of dead men.

"Oh, by God, what an implement!"

Mignon let the words escape him in his ecstasy, for he felt a return 
of personal gratitude.

Nana had gradually lapsed into a most mournful condition.  To begin 
with, the meeting of the marquis and the count had given her a 
severe fit of feverish nervousness, which verged at times on 
laughter.  Then the thought of this old man going away half dead in 
a cab and of her poor rough, whom she would never set eyes on again 
now that she had driven him so wild, brought on what looked like the 
beginnings of melancholia.  After that she grew vexed to hear about 
Satin's illness.  The girl had disappeared about a fortnight ago and 
was now ready to die at Lariboisiere, to such a damnable state had 
Mme Robert reduced her.  When she ordered the horses to be put to in 
order that she might have a last sight of this vile little wretch 
Zoe had just quietly given her a week's notice.  The announcement 
drove her to desperation at once!  It seemed to her she was losing a 
member of her own family.  Great heavens!  What was to become of her 
when left alone?  And she besought Zoe to stay, and the latter, much 
flattered by Madame's despair, ended by kissing her to show that she 
was not going away in anger.  No, she had positively to go: the 
heart could have no voice in matters of business.

But that day was one of annoyances.  Nana was thoroughly disgusted 
and gave up the idea of going out.  She was dragging herself wearily 
about the little drawing room when Labordette came up to tell her of 
a splendid chance of buying magnificent lace and in the course of 
his remarks casually let slip the information that Georges was dead.  
The announcement froze her.

"Zizi dead!" she cried.

And involuntarily her eyes sought the pink stain on the carpet, but 
it had vanished at last; passing footsteps had worn it away.  
Meanwhile Labordette entered into particulars.  It was not exactly 
known how he died.  Some spoke of a wound reopening, others of 
suicide.  The lad had plunged, they said, into a tank at Les 
Fondettes.  Nana kept repeating:

"Dead!  Dead!"

She had been choking with grief since morning, and now she burst out 
sobbing and thus sought relief.  Hers was an infinite sorrow: it 
overwhelmed her with its depth and immensity.  Labordette wanted to 
comfort her as touching Georges, but she silenced him with a gesture 
and blurted out:

"It isn't only he; it's everything, everything.  I'm very wretched.  
Oh yes, I know!  They'll again be saying I'm a hussy.  To think of 
the mother mourning down there and of the poor man who was groaning 
in front of my door this morning and of all the other people that 
are now ruined after running through all they had with me!  That's 
it; punish Nana; punish the beastly thing!  Oh, I've got a broad 
back!  I can hear them as if I were actually there!  'That dirty 
wench who lies with everybody and cleans out some and drives others 
to death and causes a whole heap of people pain!'"

She was obliged to pause, for tears choked her utterance, and in her 
anguish she flung herself athwart a divan and buried her face in a 
cushion.  The miseries she felt to be around her, miseries of which 
she was the cause, overwhelmed her with a warm, continuous stream of 
self-pitying tears, and her voice failed as she uttered a little 
girl's broken plaint:

"Oh, I'm wretched!  Oh, I'm wretched!  I can't go on like this: it's 
choking me.  It's too hard to be misunderstood and to see them all 
siding against you because they're stronger.  However, when you've 
got nothing to reproach yourself with and your conscious is clear, 
why, then I say, 'I won't have it!  I won't have it!'"

In her anger she began rebeling against circumstances, and getting 
up, she dried her eyes, and walked about in much agitation.

"I won't have it!  They can say what they like, but it's not my 
fault!  Am I a bad lot, eh?  I give away all I've got; I wouldn't 
crush a fly!  It's they who are bad!  Yes, it's they!  I never 
wanted to be horrid to them.  And they came dangling after me, and 
today they're kicking the bucket and begging and going to ruin on 
purpose."

Then she paused in front of Labordette and tapped his shoulders.

"Look here," she said, "you were there all along; now speak the 
truth: did I urge them on?  Weren't there always a dozen of 'em 
squabbling who could invent the dirtiest trick?  They used to 
disgust me, they did!  I did all I knew not to copy them: I was 
afraid to.  Look here, I'll give you a single instance: they all 
wanted to marry me!  A pretty notion, eh?  Yes, dear boy, I could 
have been countess or baroness a dozen times over and more, if I'd 
consented.  Well now, I refused because I was reasonable.  Oh yes, I 
saved 'em some crimes and other foul acts!  They'd have stolen, 
murdered, killed father and mother.  I had only to say one word, and 
I didn't say it.  You see what I've got for it today.  There's 
Daguenet, for instance; I married that chap off!  I made a position 
for the beggarly fellow after keeping him gratis for weeks!  And I 
met him yesterday, and he looks the other way!  Oh, get along, you 
swine!  I'm less dirty than you!"

She had begun pacing about again, and now she brought her fist 
violently down on a round table.

"By God it isn't fair!  Society's all wrong.  They come down on the 
women when it's the men who want you to do things.  Yes, I can tell 
you this now: when I used to go with them--see?  I didn't enjoy it; 
no, I didn't enjoy it one bit.  It bored me, on my honor.  Well 
then, I ask you whether I've got anything to do with it!  Yes, they 
bored me to death!  If it hadn't been for them and what they made of 
me, dear boy, I should be in a convent saying my prayers to the good 
God, for I've always had my share of religion.  Dash it, after all, 
if they have dropped their money and their lives over it, what do I 
care?  It's their fault.  I've had nothing to do with it!"

"Certainly not," said Labordette with conviction.

Zoe ushered in Mignon, and Nana received him smilingly.  She had 
cried a good deal, but it was all over now.  Still glowing with 
enthusiasm, he complimented her on her installation, but she let him 
see that she had had enough of her mansion and that now she had 
other projects and would sell everything up one of these days.  Then 
as he excused himself for calling on the ground that he had come 
about a benefit performance in aid of old Bose, who was tied to his 
armchair by paralysis, she expressed extreme pity and took two 
boxes.  Meanwhile Zoe announced that the carriage was waiting for 
Madame, and she asked for her hat and as she tied the strings told 
them about poor, dear Satin's mishap, adding:

"I'm going to the hospital.  Nobody ever loved me as she did.  Oh, 
they're quite right when they accuse the men of heartlessness!  Who 
knows?  Perhaps I shan't see her alive.  Never mind, I shall ask to 
see her: I want to give her a kiss."

Labordette and Mignon smiled, and as Nana was no longer melancholy 
she smiled too.  Those two fellows didn't count; they could enter 
into her feelings.  And they both stood and admired her in silent 
abstraction while she finished buttoning her gloves.  She alone kept 
her feet amid the heaped-up riches of her mansion, while a whole 
generation of men lay stricken down before her.  Like those antique 
monsters whose redoubtable domains were covered with skeletons, she 
rested her feet on human skulls.  She was ringed round with 
catastrophes.  There was the furious immolation of Vandeuvres; the 
melancholy state of Foucarmont, who was lost in the China seas; the 
smashup of Steiner, who now had to live like an honest man; the 
satisfied idiocy of La Faloise, and the tragic shipwreck of the 
Muffats.  Finally there was the white corpse of Georges, over which 
Philippe was now watching, for he had come out of prison but 
yesterday.  She had finished her labor of ruin and death.  The fly 
that had flown up from the ordure of the slums, bringing with it the 
leaven of social rottenness, 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.  She was still big; she was still 
plump; her health was excellent, her spirits capital.  But this went 
for nothing now, for her house struck her as ridiculous.  It was too 
small; it was full of furniture which got in her way.  It was a 
wretched business, and the long and the short of the matter was she 
would have to make a fresh start.  In fact, she was meditating 
something much better, and so she went off to kiss Satin for the 
last time.  She was in all her finery and looked clean and solid and 
as brand new as if she had never seen service before.



CHAPTER XIV


Nana suddenly disappeared.  It was a fresh plunge, an escapade, a 
flight into barbarous regions.  Before her departure she had treated 
herself to a new sensation: she had held a sale and had made a clean 
sweep of everything--house, furniture, jewelry, nay, even dresses 
and linen.  Prices were cited--the five days' sale produced more 
than six hundred thousand francs.  For the last time Paris had seen 
her in a fairy piece.  It was called Melusine, and it played at the 
Theatre de la Gaite, which the penniless Bordenave had taken out of 
sheer audacity.  Here she again found herself in company with 
Prulliere and Fontan.  Her part was simply spectacular, but it was 
the great attraction of the piece, consisting, as it did, of three 
POSES PLASTIQUES, each of which represented the same dumb and 
puissant fairy.  Then one fine morning amid his grand success, when 
Bordenave, who was mad after advertisement, kept firing the Parisian 
imagination with colossal posters, it became known that she must 
have started for Cairo the previous day.  She had simply had a few 
words with her manager.  Something had been said which did not 
please her; the whole thing was the caprice of a woman who is too 
rich to let herself be annoyed.  Besides, she had indulged an old 
infatuation, for she had long meditated visiting the Turks.

Months passed--she began to be forgotten.  When her name was 
mentioned among the ladies and gentlemen, the strangest stories were 
told, and everybody gave the most contradictory and at the same time 
prodigious information.  She had made a conquest of the viceroy; she 
was reigning, in the recesses of a palace, over two hundred slaves 
whose heads she now and then cut off for the sake of a little 
amusement.  No, not at all!  She had ruined herself with a great big 
nigger!  A filthy passion this, which had left her wallowing without 
a chemise to her back in the crapulous debauchery of Cairo.  A 
fortnight later much astonishment was produced when someone swore to 
having met her in Russia.  A legend began to be formed: she was the 
mistress of a prince, and her diamonds were mentioned.  All the 
women were soon acquainted with them from the current descriptions, 
but nobody could cite the precise source of all this information.  
There were finger rings, earrings, bracelets, a REVIERE of 
phenomenal width, a queenly diadem surmounted by a central brilliant 
the size of one's thumb.  In the retirement of those faraway 
countries she began to gleam forth as mysteriously as a gem-laden 
idol.  People now mentioned her without laughing, for they were full 
of meditative respect for this fortune acquired among the 
barbarians.

One evening in July toward eight o'clock, Lucy, while getting out of 
her carriage in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, noticed Caroline 
Hequet, who had come out on foot to order something at a neighboring 
tradesman's.  Lucy called her and at once burst out with:

"Have you dined?  Are you disengaged?  Oh, then come with me, my 
dear.  Nana's back."

The other got in at once, and Lucy continued:

"And you know, my dear, she may be dead while we're gossiping."

"Dead!  What an idea!" cried Caroline in stupefaction.  "And where 
is she?  And what's it of?"

"At the Grand Hotel, of smallpox.  Oh, it's a long story!"

Lucy had bidden her coachman drive fast, and while the horses 
trotted rapidly along the Rue Royale and the boulevards, she told 
what had happened to Nana in jerky, breathless sentences.

"You can't imagine it.  Nana plumps down out of Russia.  I don't 
know why--some dispute with her prince.  She leaves her traps at the 
station; she lands at her aunt's--you remember the old thing.  Well, 
and then she finds her baby dying of smallpox.  The baby dies next 
day, and she has a row with the aunt about some money she ought to 
have sent, of which the other one has never seen a sou.  Seems the 
child died of that: in fact, it was neglected and badly cared for.  
Very well; Nana slopes, goes to a hotel, then meets Mignon just as 
she was thinking of her traps.  She has all sorts of queer feelings, 
shivers, wants to be sick, and Mignon takes her back to her place 
and promises to look after her affairs.  Isn't it odd, eh?  Doesn't 
it all happen pat?  But this is the best part of the story: Rose 
finds out about Nana's illness and gets indignant at the idea of her 
being alone in furnished apartments.  So she rushes off, crying, to 
look after her.  You remember how they used to detest one another--
like regular furies!  Well then, my dear, Rose has had Nana 
transported to the Grand Hotel, so that she should, at any rate, die 
in a smart place, and now she's already passed three nights there 
and is free to die of it after.  It's Labordette who told me all 
about it.  Accordingly I wanted to see for myself--"

"Yes, yes," interrupted Caroline in great excitement "We'll go up to 
her."

They had arrived at their destination.  On the boulevard the 
coachman had had to rein in his horses amid a block of carriages and 
people on foot.  During the day the Corps Legislatif had voted for 
war, and now a crowd was streaming down all the streets, flowing 
along all the pavements, invading the middle of the roadway.  Beyond 
the Madeleine the sun had set behind a blood-red cloud, which cast a 
reflection as of a great fire and set the lofty windows flaming.  
Twilight was falling, and the hour was oppressively melancholy, for 
now the avenues were darkening away into the distance but were not 
as yet dotted over by the bright sparks of the gas lamps.  And among 
the marching crowds distant voices swelled and grew ever louder, and 
eyes gleamed from pale faces, while a great spreading wind of 
anguish and stupor set every head whirling.

"Here's Mignon," said Lucy.  "He'll give us news."

Mignon was standing under the vast porch of the Grand Hotel.  He 
looked nervous and was gazing at the crowd.  After Lucy's first few 
questions he grew impatient and cried out:

"How should I know?  These last two days I haven't been able to tear 
Rose away from up there.  It's getting stupid, when all's said, for 
her to be risking her life like that!  She'll be charming if she 
gets over it, with holes in her face!  It'll suit us to a tee!"

The idea that Rose might lose her beauty was exasperating him.  He 
was giving up Nana in the most downright fashion, and he could not 
in the least understand these stupid feminine devotions.  But 
Fauchery was crossing the boulevard, and he, too, came up anxiously 
and asked for news.  The two men egged each other on.  They 
addressed one another familiarly in these days.

"Always the same business, my sonny," declared Mignon.  "You ought 
to go upstairs; you would force her to follow you."

"Come now, you're kind, you are!" said the journalist.  "Why don't 
you go upstairs yourself?"

Then as Lucy began asking for Nana's number, they besought her to 
make Rose come down; otherwise they would end by getting angry.

Nevertheless, Lucy and Caroline did not go up at once.  They had 
caught sight of Fontan strolling about with his hands in his pockets 
and greatly amused by the quaint expressions of the mob.  When he 
became aware that Nana was lying ill upstairs he affected sentiment 
and remarked:

"The poor girl!  I'll go and shake her by the hand.  What's the 
matter with her, eh?"

"Smallpox," replied Mignon.

The actor had already taken a step or two in the direction of the 
court, but he came back and simply murmured with a shiver:

"Oh, damn it!"

The smallpox was no joke.  Fontan had been near having it when he 
was five years old, while Mignon gave them an account of one of his 
nieces who had died of it.  As to Fauchery, he could speak of it 
from personal experience, for he still bore marks of it in the shape 
of three little lumps at the base of his nose, which he showed them.  
And when Mignon again egged him on to the ascent, on the pretext 
that you never had it twice, he violently combated this theory and 
with infinite abuse of the doctors instanced various cases.  But 
Lucy and Caroline interrupted them, for the growing multitude filled 
them with astonishment.

"Just look!  Just look what a lot of people!"  The night was 
deepening, and in the distance the gas lamps were being lit one by 
one.  Meanwhile interested spectators became visible at windows, 
while under the trees the human flood grew every minute more dense, 
till it ran in one enormous stream from the Madeleine to the 
Bastille.  Carriages rolled slowly along.  A roaring sound went up 
from this compact and as yet inarticulate mass.  Each member of it 
had come out, impelled by the desire to form a crowd, and was now 
trampling along, steeping himself in the pervading fever.  But a 
great movement caused the mob to flow asunder.  Among the jostling, 
scattering groups a band of men in workmen's caps and white blouses 
had come in sight, uttering a rhythmical cry which suggested the 
beat of hammers upon an anvil.

"To Ber-lin!  To Ber-lin!  To Ber-lin!"  And the crowd stared in 
gloomy distrust yet felt themselves already possessed and inspired 
by heroic imaginings, as though a military band were passing.

"Oh yes, go and get your throats cut!" muttered Mignon, overcome by 
an access of philosophy.

But Fontan thought it very fine, indeed, and spoke of enlisting.  
When the enemy was on the frontier all citizens ought to rise up in 
defense of the fatherland!  And with that he assumed an attitude 
suggestive of Bonaparte at Austerlitz.

"Look here, are you coining up with us?" Lucy asked him.

"Oh dear, no!  To catch something horrid?" he said.

On a bench in front of the Grand Hotel a man sat hiding his face in 
a handkerchief.  On arriving Fauchery had indicated him to Mignon 
with a wink of the eye.  Well, he was still there; yes, he was 
always there.  And the journalist detained the two women also in 
order to point him out to them.  When the man lifted his head they 
recognized him; an exclamation escaped them.  It was the Count 
Muffat, and he was giving an upward glance at one of the windows.

"You know, he's bemight be the face.  Lucy 
added:

"I never saw her since that time at the Gaite, when she was at the 
end of the grotto."

At this Rose awoke from her stupor and smiled as she said:

"Ah, she's changed; she's changed."

Then she once more lapsed into contemplation and neither moved nor 
spoke.  Perhaps they would be able to look at her presently!  And 
with that the three women joined the others in front of the 
fireplace.  Simonne and Clarisse were discussing the dead woman's 
diamonds in low tones.  Well, did they really exist--those diamonds?  
Nobody had seen them; it must be a bit of humbug.  But Lea de Horn 
knew someone who knew all about them.  Oh, they were monster stones!  
Besides, they weren't all; she had brought back lots of other 
precious property from Russia--embroidered stuffs, for instance, 
valuable knickknacks, a gold dinner service, nay, even en waiting there since this morning," Mignon 
informed them.  "I saw him at six o'clock, and he hasn't moved 
since.  Directly Labordette spoke about it he came there with his 
handkerchief up to his face.  Every half-hour he comes dragging 
himself to where we're standing to ask if the person upstairs is 
doing better, and then he goes back and sits down.  Hang it, that 
room isn't healthy!  It's all very well being fond of people, but 
one doesn't want to kick the bucket."

The count sat with uplifted eyes and did not seem conscious of what 
was going on around him.  Doubtless he was ignorant of the 
declaration of war, and he neither felt nor saw the crowd.

"Look, here he comes!" said Fauchery.  "Now you'll see."

The count had, in fact, quitted his bench and was entering the lofty 
porch.  But the porter, who was getting to know his face at last, 
did not give him time to put his question.  He said sharply:

"She's dead, monsieur, this very minute."

Nana dead!  It was a blow to them all.  Without a word Muffat had 
gone back to the bench, his face still buried in his handkerchief.  
The others burst into exclamations, but they were cut short, for a 
fresh band passed by, howling, "A BERLIN!  A BERLIN!  A BERLIN!"  
Nana dead!  Hang it, and such a fine girl too!  Mignon sighed and 
looked relieved, for at last Rose would come down.  A chill fell on 
the company.  Fontan, meditating a tragic role, had assumed a look 
of woe and was drawing down the corners of his mouth and rolling his 
eyes askance, while Fauchery chewed his cigar nervously, for despite 
his cheap journalistic chaff he was really touched.  Nevertheless, 
the two women continued to give vent to their feelings of surprise.  
The last time Lucy had seen her was at the Gaite; Blanche, too, had 
seen her in Melusine.  Oh, how stunning it was, my dear, when she 
appeared in the depths of the crystal grot!  The gentlemen 
remembered the occasion perfectly.  Fontan had played the Prince 
Cocorico.  And their memories once stirred up, they launched into 
interminable particulars.  How ripping she looked with that rich 
coloring of hers in the crystal grot!  Didn't she, now?  She didn't 
say a word: the authors had even deprived her of a line or two, 
because it was superfluous.  No, never a word!  It was grander that 
way, and she drove her public wild by simply showing herself.  You 
wouldn't find another body like hers!  Such shoulders as she had, 
and such legs and such a figure!  Strange that she should be dead!  
You know, above her tights she had nothing on but a golden girdle 
which hardly concealed her behind and in front.  All round her the 
grotto, which was entirely of glass, shone like day.  Cascades of 
diamonds were flowing down; strings of brilliant pearls glistened 
among the stalactites in the vault overhead, and amid the 
transparent atmosphere and flowing fountain water, which was crossed 
by a wide ray of electric light, she gleamed like the sun with that 
flamelike skin and hair of hers. f Paris would always picture her 
thus--would see her shining high up among crystal glass like the 
good God Himself.  No, it was too stupid to let herself die under 
such conditions!  She must be looking pretty by this time in that 
room up there!

"And what a lot of pleasures bloody well wasted!" said Mignon in 
melancholy tones, as became a man who did not like to see good and 
useful things lost.

He sounded Lucy and Caroline in order to find out if they were going 
up after all.  Of course they were going up; their curiosity had 
increased.  Just then Blanche arrived, out of breath and much 
exasperated at the way the crowds were blocking the pavement, and 
when she heard the news there was a fresh outburst of exclamations, 
and with a great rustling of skirts the ladies moved toward the 
staircase.  Mignon followed them, crying out:

"Tell Rose that I'm waiting for her.  She'll come at once, eh?"

"They do not exactly know whether the contagion is to be feared at 
the beginning or near the end," Fontan was explaining to Fauchery.  
"A medical I know was assuring me that the hours immediately 
following death are particularly dangerous.  There are miasmatic 
exhalations then.  Ah, but I do regret this sudden ending; I should 
have been so glad to shake hands with her for the last time.

"What good would it do you now?" said the journalist.

"Yes, what good?" the two others repeated.

The crowd was still on the increase.  In the bright light thrown 
from shop-windows and beneath the wavering glare of the gas two 
living streams were distinguishable as they flowed along the 
pavement, innumerable hats apparently drifting on their surface.  At 
that hour the popular fever was gaining ground rapidly, and people 
were flinging themselves in the wake of the bands of men in blouses.  
A constant forward movement seemed to sweep the roadway, and the cry 
kept recurring; obstinately, abruptly, there rang from thousands of 
throats:

"A BERLIN!  A BERLIN!  A BERLIN!"

The room on the fourth floor upstairs cost twelve francs a day, 
since Rose had wanted something decent and yet not luxurious, for 
sumptuousness is not necessary when one is suffering.  Hung with 
Louis XIII cretonne, which was adorned with a pattern of large 
flowers, the room was furnished with the mahogany commonly found in 
hotels.  On the floor there was a red carpet variegated with black 
foliage.  Heavy silence reigned save for an occasional whispering 
sound caused by voices in the corridor.

"I assure you we're lost.  The waiter told us to turn to the right.  
What a barrack of a house!"

"Wait a bit; we must have a look.  Room number 401; room number 
401!"

"Oh, it's this way: 405, 403.  We ought to be there.  Ah, at last, 
401!  This way!  Hush now, hush!"

The voices were silent.  Then there was a slight coughing and a 
moment or so of mental preparation.  Then the door opened slowly, 
and Lucy entered, followed by Caroline and Blanche.  But they 
stopped directly; there were already five women in the room; Gaga 
was lying back in the solitary armchair, which was a red velvet 
Voltaire.  In front of the fireplace Simonne and Clarisse were now 
standing talking to Lea de Horn, who was seated, while by the bed, 
to the left of the door, Rose Mignon, perched on the edge of a 
chest, sat gazing fixedly at the body where it lay hidden in the 
shadow of the curtains.  All the others had their hats and gloves on 
and looked as if they were paying a call: she alone sat there with 
bare hands and untidy hair and cheeks rendered pale by three nights 
of watching.  She felt stupid in the face of this sudden death, and 
her eyes were swollen with weeping.  A shaded lamp standing on the 
corner of the chest of drawers threw a bright flood of light over 
Gaga.

"What a sad misfortune, is it not?" whispered Lucy as she shook 
hands with Rose.  "We wanted to bid her good-by."

And she turned round and tried to catch sight of her, but the lamp 
was too far off, and she did not dare bring it nearer.  On the bed 
lay stretched a gray mass, but only the ruddy chignon was 
distinguishable and a pale blotch which urniture.  
"Yes, my dear, fifty-two boxes, enormous cases some of them, three 
truckloads of them!"  They were all lying at the station.  "Wasn't 
it hard lines, eh?--to die without even having time to unpack one's 
traps?"  Then she had a lot of tin, besides--something like a 
million!  Lucy asked who was going to inherit it all.  Oh, distant 
relations--the aunt, without doubt!  It would be a pretty surprise 
for that old body.  She knew nothing about it yet, for the sick 
woman had obstinately refused to let them warn her, for she still 
owed her a grudge over her little boy's death.  Thereupon they were 
all moved to pity about the little boy, and they remembered seeing 
him at the races.  Oh, it was a wretchedly sickly baby; it looked so 
old and so sad.  In fact, it was one of those poor brats who never 
asked to be born!

"He's happier under the ground," said Blanche.

"Bah, and so's she!" added Caroline.  "Life isn't so funny!"

In that gloomy room melancholy ideas began to take possession of 
their imaginations.  They felt frightened.  It was silly to stand 
talking so long, but a longing to see her kept them rooted to the 
spot.  It was very hot--the lamp glass threw a round, moonlike patch 
of light upon the ceiling, but the rest of the room was drowned in 
steamy darkness.  Under the bed a deep plate full of phenol exhaled 
an insipid smell.  And every few moments tiny gusts of wind swelled 
the window curtains.  The window opened on the boulevard, whence 
rose a dull roaring sound.

"Did she suffer much?" asked Lucy, who was absorbed in contemplation 
of the clock, the design of which represented the three Graces as 
nude young women, smiling like opera dancers.

Gaga seemed to wake up.

"My word, yes!  I was present when she died.  I promise you it was 
not at all pleasant to see.  Why, she was taken with a shuddering 
fit--"

But she was unable to proceed with her explanation, for a cry arose 
outside:

"A BERLIN!  A BERLIN!  A BERLIN!"

And Lucy, who felt suffocated, flung wide the window and leaned upon 
the sill.  It was pleasant there; the air came fresh from the starry 
sky.  Opposite her the windows were all aglow with light, and the 
gas sent dancing reflections over the gilt lettering of the shop 
signs.

Beneath these, again, a most amusing scene presented itself.  The 
streams of people were discernible rolling torrentwise along the 
sidewalks and in the roadway, where there was a confused procession 
of carriages.  Everywhere there were vast moving shadows in which 
lanterns and lampposts gleamed like sparks.  But the band which now 
came roaring by carried torches, and a red glow streamed down from 
the direction of the Madeleine, crossed the mob like a trail of fire 
and spread out over the heads in the distance like a vivid 
reflection of a burning house.  Lucy called Blanche and Caroline, 
forgetting where she was and shouting:

"Do come!  You get a capital view from this window!"

They all three leaned out, greatly interested.  The trees got in 
their way, and occasionally the torches disappeared under the 
foliage.  They tried to catch a glimpse of the men of their own 
party below, but a protruding balcony hid the door, and they could 
only make out Count Muffat, who looked like a dark parcel thrown 
down on the bench where he sat.  He was still burying his face in 
his handkerchief.  A carriage had stopped in front, and yet another 
woman hurried up, in whom Lucy recognized Maria Blond.  She was not 
alone; a stout man got down after her.

"It's that thief of a Steiner," said Caroline.  "How is it they 
haven't sent him back to Cologne yet?  I want to see how he looks 
when he comes in."

They turned round, but when after the lapse of ten minutes Maria 
Blond appeared, she was alone.  She had twice mistaken the 
staircase.  And when Lucy, in some astonishment, questioned her:

"What, he?" she said.  "My dear, don't you go fancying that he'll 
come upstairs!  It's a great wonder he's escorted me as far as the 
door.  There are nearly a dozen of them smoking cigars."

As a matter of fact, all the gentlemen were meeting downstairs.  
They had come strolling thither in order to have a look at the 
boulevards, and they hailed one another and commented loudly on that 
poor girl's death.  Then they began discussing politics and 
strategy.  Bordenave, Daguenet, Labordette, Prulliere and others, 
besides, had swollen the group, and now they were all listening to 
Fontan, who was explaining his plan for taking Berlin within a week.

Meanwhile Maria Blond was touched as she stood by the bedside and 
murmured, as the others had done before her:

"Poor pet!  The last time I saw her was in the grotto at the Gaite."

"Ah, she's changed; she's changed!"  Rose Mignon repeated with a 
smile of gloomiest dejection.

Two more women arrived.  These were Tatan Nene and Louise Violaine.  
They had been wandering about the Grand Hotel for twenty minutes 
past, bandied from waiter to waiter, and had ascended and descended 
more than thirty flights of stairs amid a perfect stampede of 
travelers who were hurrying to leave Paris amid the panic caused by 
the war and the excitement on the boulevards.  Accordingly they just 
dropped down on chairs when they came in, for they were too tired to 
think about the dead.  At that moment a loud noise came from the 
room next door, where people were pushing trunks about and striking 
against furniture to an accompaniment of strident, outlandish 
syllables.  It was a young Austrian couple, and Gaga told how during 
her agony the neighbors had played a game of catch as catch can and 
how, as only an unused door divided the two rooms, they had heard 
them laughing and kissing when one or the other was caught.

"Come, it's time we were off," said Clarisse.  "We shan't bring her 
to life again.  Are you coming, Simonne?"

They all looked at the bed out of the corners of their eyes, but 
they did not budge an inch.  Nevertheless, they began getting ready 
and gave their skirts various little pats.  Lucy was again leaning 
out of window.  She was alone now, and a sorrowful feeling began 
little by little to overpower her, as though an intense wave of 
melancholy had mounted up from the howling mob.  Torches still kept 
passing, shaking out clouds of sparks, and far away in the distance 
the various bands stretched into the shadows, surging unquietly to 
and fro like flocks being driven to the slaughterhouse at night.  A 
dizzy feeling emanated from these confused masses as the human flood 
rolled them along--a dizzy feeling, a sense of terror and all the 
pity of the massacres to come.  The people were going wild; their 
voices broke; they were drunk with a fever of excitement which sent 
them rushing toward the unknown "out there" beyond the dark wall of 
the horizon.

"A BERLIN!  A BERLIN!  A BERLIN!"

Lucy turned round.  She leaned her back against the window, and her 
face was very pale.

"Good God!  What's to become of us?"

The ladies shook their heads.  They were serious and very anxious 
about the turn events were taking.

"For my part," said Caroline Hequet in her decisive way, "I start 
for London the day after tomorrow.  Mamma's already over there 
getting a house ready for me.  I'm certainly not going to let myself 
be massacred in Paris."

Her mother, as became a prudent woman, had invested all her 
daughters' money in foreign lands.  One never knows how a war may 
end!  But Maria Blond grew vexed at this.  She was a patriot and 
spoke of following the army.

"There's a coward for you!  Yes, if they wanted me I should put on 
man's clothes just to have a good shot at those pigs of Prussians!  
And if we all die after?  What of that?  Our wretched skins aren't 
so valuable!"

Blanche de Sivry was exasperated.

"Please don't speak ill of the Prussians!  They are just like other 
men, and they're not always running after the women, like your 
Frenchmen.  They've just expelled the little Prussian who was with 
me.  He was an awfully rich fellow and so gentle: he couldn't have 
hurt a soul.  It's disgraceful; I'm ruined by it.  And, you know, 
you mustn't say a word or I go and find him out in Germany!"

After that, while the two were at loggerheads, Gaga began murmuring 
in dolorous tones:

"It's all over with me; my luck's always bad.  It's only a week ago 
that I finished paying for my little house at Juvisy.  Ah, God knows 
what trouble it cost me!  I had to go to Lili for help!  And now 
here's the war declared, and the Prussians'll come and they'll burn 
everything.  How am I to begin again at my time of life, I should 
like to know?"

"Bah!" said Clarisse.  "I don't care a damn about it.  I shall 
always find what I want."

"Certainly you will," added Simonne.  "It'll be a joke.  Perhaps, 
after all, it'll be good biz."

And her smile hinted what she thought.  Tatan Nene and Louise 
Violaine were of her opinion.  The former told them that she had 
enjoyed the most roaring jolly good times with soldiers.  Oh, they 
were good fellows and would have done any mortal thing for the 
girls.  But as the ladies had raised their voices unduly Rose 
Mignon, still sitting on the chest by the bed, silenced them with a 
softly whispered "Hush!"  They stood quite still at this and glanced 
obliquely toward the dead woman, as though this request for silence 
had emanated from the very shadows of the curtains.  In the heavy, 
peaceful stillness which ensued, a void, deathly stillness which 
made them conscious of the stiff dead body lying stretched close by 
them, the cries of the mob burst forth:

"A BERLIN!  A BERLIN!  A BERLIN!"

But soon they forgot.  Lea de Horn, who had a political salon where 
former ministers of Louis Philippe were wont to indulge in delicate 
epigrams, shrugged her shoulders and continued the conversation in a 
low tone:

"What a mistake this war is!  What a bloodthirsty piece of 
stupidity!"

At this Lucy forthwith took up the cudgels for the empire.  She had 
been the mistress of a prince of the imperial house, and its defense 
became a point of family honor with her.

"Do leave them alone, my dear.  We couldn't let ourselves be further 
insulted!  Why, this war concerns the honor of France.  Oh, you know 
I don't say that because of the prince.  He WAS just mean!  Just 
imagine, at night when he was going to bed he hid his gold in his 
boots, and when we played at bezique he used beans, because one day 
I pounced down on the stakes for fun.  But that doesn't prevent my 
being fair.  The emperor was right."

Lea shook her head with an air of superiority, as became a woman who 
was repeating the opinions of important personages.  Then raising 
her voice:

"This is the end of all things.  They're out of their minds at the 
Tuileries.  France ought to have driven them out yesterday.  Don't 
you see?"

They all violently interrupted her.  What was up with her?  Was she 
mad about the emperor?  Were people not happy?  Was business doing 
badly?  Paris would never enjoy itself so thoroughly again.

Gaga was beside herself; she woke up and was very indignant.

"Be quiet!  It's idiotic!  You don't know what you're saying.  I--
I've seen Louis Philippe's reign: it was full of beggars and misers, 
my dear.  And then came '48!  Oh, it was a pretty disgusting 
business was their republic!  After February I was simply dying of 
starvation--yes, I, Gaga.  Oh, if only you'd been through it all you 
would go down on your knees before the emperor, for he's been a 
father to us; yes, a father to us."

She had to be soothed but continued with pious fervor:

"O my God, do Thy best to give the emperor the victory.  Preserve 
the empire to us!"

They all repeated this aspiration, and Blanche confessed that she 
burned candles for the emperor.  Caroline had been smitten by him 
and for two whole months had walked where he was likely to pass but 
had failed to attract his attention.  And with that the others burst 
forth into furious denunciations of the Republicans and talked of 
exterminating them on the frontiers so that Napoleon III, after 
having beaten the enemy, might reign peacefully amid universal 
enjoyment.

"That dirty Bismarck--there's another cad for you!" Maria Blond 
remarked.

"To think that I should have known him!" cried Simonne.  "If only I 
could have foreseen, I'm the one that would have put some poison in 
his glass."

But Blanche, on whose heart the expulsion of her Prussian still 
weighed, ventured to defend Bismarck.  Perhaps he wasn't such a bad 
sort.  To every man his trade!

"You know," she added, "he adores women."

"What the hell has that got to do with us?" said Clarisse.  "We 
don't want to cuddle him, eh?"

"There's always too many men of that sort!" declared Louise Violaine 
gravely.  "It's better to do without 'em than to mix oneself up with 
such monsters!"

And the discussion continued, and they stripped Bismarck, and, in 
her Bonapartist zeal, each of them gave him a sounding kick, while 
Tatan Nene kept saying:

"Bismarck!  Why, they've simply driven me crazy with the chap!  Oh, 
I hate him!  I didn't know that there Bismarck!  One can't know 
everybody."

"Never mind," said Lea de Horn by way of conclusion, "that Bismarck 
will give us a jolly good threshing."

But she could not continue.  The ladies were all down on her at 
once.  Eh, what?  A threshing?  It was Bismarck they were going to 
escort home with blows from the butt ends of their muskets.  What 
was this bad Frenchwoman going to say next?

"Hush," whispered Rose, for so much noise hurt her.

The cold influence of the corpse once more overcame them, and they 
all paused together.  They were embarrassed; the dead woman was 
before them again; a dull thread of coming ill possessed them.  On 
the boulevard the cry was passing, hoarse and wild:

"A BERLIN!  A BERLIN!  A BERLIN!"

Presently, when they were making up their minds to go, a voice was 
heard calling from the passage:

"Rose!  Rose!"

Gaga opened the door in astonishment and disappeared for a moment.  
When she returned:

"My dear," she said, "it's Fauchery.  He's out there at the end of 
the corridor.  He won't come any further, and he's beside himself 
because you still stay near that body."

Mignon had at last succeeded in urging the journalist upstairs.  
Lucy, who was still at the window, leaned out and caught sight of 
the gentlemen out on the pavement.  They were looking up, making 
energetic signals to her.  Mignon was shaking his fists in 
exasperation, and Steiner, Fontan, Bordenave and the rest were 
stretching out their arms with looks of anxious reproach, while 
Daguenet simply stood smoking a cigar with his hands behind his 
back, so as not to compromise himself.

"It's true, dear," said Lucy, leaving the window open; "I promised 
to make you come down.  They're all calling us now."

Rose slowly and painfully left the chest.

"I'm coming down; I'm coming down," she whispered.  "It's very 
certain she no longer needs me.  They're going to send in a Sister 
of Mercy."

And she turned round, searching for her hat and shawl.  Mechanically 
she filled a basin of water on the toilet table and while washing 
her hands and face continued:

"I don't know!  It's been a great blow to me.  We used scarcely to 
be nice to one another.  Ah well!  You see I'm quite silly over it 
now.  Oh! I've got all sorts of strange ideas--I want to die myself--
I feel the end of the world's coming.  Yes, I need air."

The corpse was beginning to poison the atmosphere of the room.  And 
after long heedlessness there ensued a panic.

"Let's be off; let's be off, my little pets!" Gaga kept saying.  "It 
isn't wholesome here."

They went briskly out, casting a last glance at the bed as they 
passed it.  But while Lucy, Blanche and Caroline still remained 
behind, Rose gave a final look round, for she wanted to leave the 
room in order.  She drew a curtain across the window, and then it 
occurred to her that the lamp was not the proper thing and that a 
taper should take its place.  So she lit one of the copper 
candelabra on the chimney piece and placed it on the night table 
beside the corpse.  A brilliant light suddenly illumined the dead 
woman's face.  The women were horror-struck.  They shuddered and 
escaped.

"Ah, she's changed; she's changed!" murmured Rose Mignon, who was 
the last to remain.

She went away; she shut the door.  Nana was left alone with upturned 
face in the light cast by the candle.  She was fruit of the charnel 
house, a heap of matter and blood, a shovelful of corrupted flesh 
thrown down on the pillow.  The pustules had invaded the whole of 
the face, so that each touched its neighbor.  Fading and sunken, 
they had assumed the grayish hue of mud; and on that formless pulp, 
where the features had ceased to be traceable, they already 
resembled some decaying damp from the grave.  One eye, the left eye, 
had completely foundered among bubbling purulence, and the other, 
which remained half open, looked like a deep, black, ruinous hole.  
The nose was still suppurating.  Quite a reddish crush was peeling 
from one of the cheeks and invading the mouth, which it distorted 
into a horrible grin.  And over this loathsome and grotesque mask of 
death the hair, the beautiful hair, still blazed like sunlight and 
flowed downward in rippling gold.  Venus was rotting.  It seemed as 
though the poison she had assimilated in the gutters and on the 
carrion tolerated by the roadside, the leaven with which she had 
poisoned a whole people, had but now remounted to her face and 
turned it to corruption.

The room was empty.  A great despairing breath came up from the 
boulevard and swelled the curtain.

"A BERLIN!  A BERLIN!  A BERLIN!"






THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER



CHAPTER I

THE BETROTHAL


Pere Merlier's mill, one beautiful summer evening, was arranged for 
a grand fete.  In the courtyard were three tables, placed end to 
end, which awaited the guests.  Everyone knew that Francoise, 
Merlier's daughter, was that night to be betrothed to Dominique, a 
young man who was accused of idleness but whom the fair sex for 
three leagues around gazed at with sparkling eyes, such a fine 
appearance had he.

Pere Merlier's mill was pleasing to look upon.  It stood exactly in 
the center of Rocreuse, where the highway made an elbow.  The 
village had but one street, with two rows of huts, a row on each 
side of the road; but at the elbow meadows spread out, and huge 
trees which lined the banks of the Morelle covered the extremity of 
the valley with lordly shade.  There was not, in all Lorraine, a 
corner of nature more adorable.  To the right and to the left thick 
woods, centenarian forests, towered up from gentle slopes, filling 
the horizon with a sea of verdure, while toward the south the plain 
stretched away, of marvelous fertility, displaying as far as the eye 
could reach patches of ground divided by green hedges.  But what 
constituted the special charm of Rocreuse was the coolness of that 
cut of verdure in the most sultry days of July and August.  The 
Morelle descended from the forests of Gagny and seemed to have 
gathered the cold from the foliage beneath which it flowed for 
leagues; it brought with it the murmuring sounds, the icy and 
concentrated shade of the woods.  And it was not the sole source of 
coolness: all sorts of flowing streams gurgled through the forest; 
at each step springs bubbled up; one felt, on following the narrow 
pathways, that there must exist subterranean lakes which pierced 
through beneath the moss and availed themselves of the smallest 
crevices at the feet of trees or between the rocks to burst forth in 
crystalline fountains.  The whispering voices of these brooks were 
so numerous and so loud that they drowned the song of the 
bullfinches.  It was like some enchanted park with cascades falling 
from every portion.

Below the meadows were damp.  Gigantic chestnut trees cast dark 
shadows.  On the borders of the meadows long hedges of poplars 
exhibited in lines their rustling branches.  Two avenues of enormous 
plane trees stretched across the fields toward the ancient Chateau 
de Gagny, then a mass of ruins.  In this constantly watered district 
the grass grew to an extraordinary height.  It resembled a garden 
between two wooded hills, a natural garden, of which the meadows 
were the lawns, the giant trees marking the colossal flower beds.  
When the sun's rays at noon poured straight downward the shadows 
assumed a bluish tint; scorched grass slept in the heat, while an 
icy shiver passed beneath the foliage.

And there it was that Pere Merlier's mill enlivened with its 
ticktack a corner of wild verdure.  The structure, built of plaster 
and planks, seemed as old as the world.  It dipped partially in the 
Morelle, which rounded at that point into a transparent basin.  A 
sluice had been made, and the water fell from a height of several 
meters upon the mill wheel, which cracked as it turned, with the 
asthmatic cough of a faithful servant grown old in the house.  When 
Pere Merlier was advised to change it he shook his head, saying that 
a new wheel would be lazier and would not so well understand the 
work, and he mended the old one with whatever he could put his hands 
on: cask staves, rusty iron, zinc and lead.  The wheel appeared 
gayer than ever for it, with its profile grown odd, all plumed with 
grass and moss.  When the water beat upon it with its silvery flood 
it was covered with pearls; its strange carcass wore a sparkling 
attire of necklaces of mother-of-pearl.

The part of the mill which dipped in the Morelle had the air of a 
barbaric arch stranded there.  A full half of the structure was 
built on piles.  The water flowed beneath the floor, and deep places 
were there, renowned throughout the district for the enormous eels 
and crayfish caught in them.  Below the fall the basin was as clear 
as a mirror, and when the wheel did not cover it with foam schools 
of huge fish could be seen swimming with the slowness of a squadron.  
Broken steps led down to the river near a stake to which a boat was 
moored.  A wooden gallery passed above the wheel.  Windows opened, 
pierced irregularly.  It was a pell-mell of corners, of little 
walls, of constructions added too late, of beams and of roofs, which 
gave the mill the aspect of an old, dismantled citadel.  But ivy had 
grown; all sorts of clinging plants stopped the too-wide chinks and 
threw a green cloak over the ancient building.  The young ladies who 
passed by sketched Pere Merlier's mill in their albums.

On the side facing the highway the structure was more solid.  A 
stone gateway opened upon the wide courtyard, which was bordered to 
the right and to the left by sheds and stables.  Beside a well an 
immense elm covered half the courtyard with its shadow.  In the 
background the building displayed the four windows of its second 
story, surmounted by a pigeon house.  Pere Merlier's sole vanity was 
to have this front plastered every ten years.  It had just received 
a new coating and dazzled the village when the sun shone on it at 
noon.

For twenty years Pere Merlier had been mayor of Rocreuse.  He was 
esteemed for the fortune he had acquired.  His wealth was estimated 
at something like eighty thousand francs, amassed sou by sou.  When 
he married Madeleine Guillard, who brought him the mill as her 
dowry, he possessed only his two arms.  But Madeleine never repented 
of her choice, so briskly did he manage the business.  Now his wife 
was dead, and he remained a widower with his daughter Francoise.  
Certainly he might have rested, allowed the mill wheel to slumber in 
the moss, but that would have been too dull for him, and in his eyes 
the building would have seemed dead.  He toiled on for pleasure.

Pere Merlier was a tall old man with a long, still face, who never 
laughed but who possessed, notwithstanding, a very gay heart.  He 
had been chosen mayor because of his money and also on account of 
the imposing air he could assume during a marriage ceremony.

Francoise Merlier was just eighteen.  She did not pass for one of 
the handsome girls of the district, as she was not robust.  Up to 
her fifteenth year she had been even ugly.

The Rocreuse people had not been able to understand why the daughter 
of Pere and Mere Merlier, both of whom had always enjoyed excellent 
health, grew ill and with an air of regret.  But at fifteen, though 
yet delicate, her little face became one of the prettiest in the 
world.  She had black hair, black eyes, and was as rosy as a peach; 
her lips constantly wore a smile; there were dimples in her cheeks, 
and her fair forehead seemed crowned with sunlight.  Although not 
considered robust in the district, she was far from thin; the idea 
was simply that she could not lift a sack of grain, but she would 
become plump as she grew older--she would eventually be as round and 
dainty as a quail.  Her father's long periods of silence had made 
her thoughtful very young.  If she smiled constantly it was to 
please others.  By nature she was serious.

Of course all the young men of the district paid court to her, more 
on account of her ecus than her pretty ways.  At last she made a 
choice which scandalized the community.

On the opposite bank of the Morelle lived a tall youth named 
Dominique Penquer.  He did not belong to Rocreuse.  Ten years before 
he had arrived from Belgium as the heir of his uncle, who had left 
him a small property upon the very border of the forest of Gagny, 
just opposite the mill, a few gunshots distant.  He had come to sell 
this property, he said, and return home.  But the district charmed 
him, it appeared, for he did not quit it.  He was seen cultivating 
his little field, gathering a few vegetables upon which he 
subsisted.  He fished and hunted; many times the forest guards 
nearly caught him and were on the point of drawing up proces-verbaux 
against him.  This free existence, the resources of which the 
peasants could not clearly discover, at length gave him a bad 
reputation.  He was vaguely styled a poacher.  At any rate, he was 
lazy, for he was often found asleep on the grass when he should have 
been at work.  The hut he inhabited beneath the last trees on the 
edge of the forest did not seem at all like the dwelling of an 
honest young fellow.  If he had had dealings with the wolves of the 
ruins of Gagny the old women would not have been the least bit 
surprised.  Nevertheless, the young girls sometimes risked defending 
him, for this doubtful man was superb; supple and tall as a poplar, 
he had a very white skin, with flaxen hair and beard which gleamed 
like gold in the sun.

One fine morning Francoise declared to Pere Merlier that she loved 
Dominique and would never wed any other man.

It may well be imagined what a blow this was to Pere Merlier.  He 
said nothing, according to his custom, but his face grew thoughtful 
and his internal gaiety no longer sparkled in his eyes.  He looked 
gruff for a week.  Francoise also was exceedingly grave.  What 
tormented Pere Merlier was to find out how this rogue of a poacher 
had managed to fascinate his daughter.  Dominique had never visited 
the mill.  The miller watched and saw the gallant on the other side 
of the Morelle, stretched out upon the grass and feigning to be 
asleep.  Francoise could see him from her chamber window.  
Everything was plain: they had fallen in love by casting sheep's 
eyes at each other over the mill wheel.

Another week went by.  Francoise became more and more grave.  Pere 
Merlier still said nothing.  Then one evening he himself silently 
brought in Dominique.  Francoise at that moment was setting the 
table.  She did not seem astonished; she contented herself with 
putting on an additional plate, knife and fork, but the little 
dimples were again seen in her cheeks, and her smile reappeared.  
That morning Pere Merlier had sought out Dominique in his hut on the 
border of the wood.

There the two men had talked for three hours with doors and windows 
closed.  What was the purport of their conversation no one ever 
knew.  Certain it was, however, that Pere Merlier, on taking his 
departure, already called Dominique his son-in-law.  Without doubt 
the old man had found the youth he had gone to seek a worthy youth 
in the lazy fellow who stretched himself out upon the grass to make 
the girls fall in love with him.

All Rocreuse clamored.  The women at the doors had plenty to say on 
the subject of the folly of Pere Merlier, who had thus introduced a 
reprobate into his house.  The miller let people talk on.  Perhaps 
he remembered his own marriage.  He was without a sou when he wedded 
Madeleine and her mill; this, however, had not prevented him from 
making a good husband.  Besides, Dominique cut short the gossip by 
going so vigorously to work that all the district was amazed.  The 
miller's assistant had just been drawn to serve as a soldier, and 
Dominique would not suffer another to be engaged.  He carried the 
sacks, drove the cart, fought with the old mill wheel when it 
refused to turn, and all this with such good will that people came 
to see him out of curiosity.  Pere Merlier had his silent laugh.  He 
was excessively proud of having formed a correct estimate of this 
youth.  There is nothing like love to give courage to young folks.  
Amid all these heavy labors Francoise and Dominique adored each 
other.  They did not indulge in lovers' talks, but there was a 
smiling gentleness in their glances.

Up to that time Pere Merlier had not spoken a single word on the 
subject of marriage, and they respected this silence, awaiting the 
old man's will.  Finally one day toward the middle of July he caused 
three tables to be placed in the courtyard, beneath the great elm, 
and invited his friends of Rocreuse to come in the evening and drink 
a glass of wine with him.

When the courtyard was full and all had their glasses in their 
hands, Pere Merlier raised his very high and said:

"I have the pleasure to announce to you that Francoise will wed this 
young fellow here in a month, on Saint Louis's Day."

Then they drank noisily.  Everybody smiled.  But Pere Merlier, again 
lifting his voice, exclaimed:

"Dominique, embrace your fiancee.  It is your right."

They embraced, blushing to the tips of their ears, while all the 
guests laughed joyously.  It was a genuine fete.  They emptied a 
small cask of wine.  Then when all were gone but intimate friends 
the conversation was carried on without noise.  The night had 
fallen, a starry and cloudless night.  Dominique and Francoise, 
seated side by side on a bench, said nothing.

An old peasant spoke of the war the emperor had declared against 
Prussia.  All the village lads had already departed.  On the 
preceding day troops had again passed through the place.  There was 
going to be hard fighting.

"Bah!" said Pere Merlier with the selfishness of a happy man.  
"Dominique is a foreigner; he will not go to the war.  And if the 
Prussians come here he will be on hand to defend his wife!"

The idea that the Prussians might come there seemed a good joke.  
They were going to receive a sound whipping, and the affair would 
soon be over.

"I have afready seen them; I have already seen them," repeated the 
old peasant in a hollow voice.

There was silence.  Then they drank again.  Francoise and Dominique 
had heard nothing; they had gently taken each other by the hand 
behind the bench, so that nobody could see them, and it seemed so 
delightful that they remained where they were, their eyes plunged 
into the depths of the shadows.

What a warm and superb night it was!  The village slumbered on both 
edges of the white highway in infantile quietude.  From time to time 
was heard the crowing of some chanticleer aroused too soon.  From 
the huge wood near by came long breaths, which passed over the roofs 
like caresses.  The meadows, with their dark shadows, assumed a 
mysterious and dreamy majesty, while all the springs, all the 
flowing waters which gurgled in the darkness, seemed to be the cool 
and rhythmical respiration of the sleeping country.  Occasionally 
the ancient mill wheel, lost in a doze, appeared to dream like those 
old watchdogs that bark while snoring; it cracked; it talked to 
itself, rocked by the fall of the Morelle, the surface of which gave 
forth the musical and continuous sound of an organ pipe.  Never had 
more profound peace descended upon a happier corner of nature.



CHAPTER II

THE ATTACK ON THE MILL


A month later, on the day preceding that of Saint Louis, Rocreuse 
was in a state of terror.  The Prussians had beaten the emperor and 
were advancing by forced marches toward the village.  For a week 
past people who hurried along the highway had been announcing them 
thus: "They are at Lormiere--they are at Novelles!"  And on hearing 
that they were drawing near so rapidly, Rocreuse every morning 
expected to see them descend from the wood of Gagny.  They did not 
come, however, and that increased the fright.  They would surely 
fall upon the village during the night and slaughter everybody.

That morning, a little before sunrise, there was an alarm.  The 
inhabitants were awakened by the loud tramp of men on the highway.  
The women were already on their knees, making the sign of the cross, 
when some of the people, peering cautiously through the partially 
opened windows, recognized the red pantaloons.  It was a French 
detachment.  The captain immediately asked for the mayor of the 
district and remained at the mill after having talked with Pere 
Merlier.

The sun rose gaily that morning.  It would be hot at noon.  Over the 
wood floated a golden brightness, while in the distance white vapors 
arose from the meadows.  The neat and pretty village awoke amid the 
fresh air, and the country, with its river and its springs, had the 
moist sweetness of a bouquet.  But that beautiful day caused nobody 
to smile.  The captain was seen to take a turn around the mill, 
examine the neighboring houses, pass to the other side of the 
Morelle and from there study the district with a field glass; Pere 
Merlier, who accompanied him, seemed to be giving him explanations.  
Then the captain posted soldiers behind the walls, behind the trees 
and in the ditches.  The main body of the detachment encamped in the 
courtyard of the mill.  Was there going to be a battle?  When Pere 
Merlier returned he was questioned.  He nodded his head without 
speaking.  Yes, there was going to be a battle!

Francoise and Dominique were in the courtyard; they looked at him.  
At last he took his pipe from his mouth and said:

"Ah, my poor young ones, you cannot get married tomorrow!"

Dominique, his lips pressed together, with an angry frown on his 
forehead, at times raised himself on tiptoe and fixed his eyes upon 
the wood of Gagny, as if he wished to see the Prussians arrive.  
Francoise, very pale and serious, came and went, furnishing the 
soldiers with what they needed.  The troops were making soup in a 
corner of the courtyard; they joked while waiting for it to get 
ready.

The captain was delighted.  He had visited the chambers and the huge 
hall of the mill which looked out upon the river.  Now, seated 
beside the well, he was conversing with Pere Merlier.

"Your mill is a real fortress," he said.  "We can hold it without 
difficulty until evening.  The bandits are late.  They ought to be 
here."

The miller was grave.  He saw his mill burning like a torch, but he 
uttered no complaint, thinking such a course useless.  He merely 
said:

"You had better hide the boat behind the wheel; there is a place 
there just fit for that purpose.  Perhaps it will be useful to have 
the boat."

The captain gave the requisite order.  This officer was a handsome 
man of forty; he was tall and had an amiable countenance.  The sight 
of Francoise and Dominique seemed to please him.  He contemplated 
them as if he had forgotten the coming struggle.  He followed 
Francoise with his eyes, and his look told plainly that he thought 
her charming.  Then turning toward Dominique, he asked suddenly:

"Why are you not in the army, my good fellow?"

"I am a foreigner," answered the young man.

The captain evidently did not attach much weight to this reason.  He 
winked his eye and smiled.  Francoise was more agreeable company 
than a cannon.  On seeing him smile, Dominique added:

"I am a foreigner, but I can put a ball in an apple at five hundred 
meters.  There is my hunting gun behind you."

"You may have use for it," responded the captain dryly.

Francoise had approached, somewhat agitated.  Without heeding the 
strangers present Dominique took and grasped in his the two hands 
she extended to him, as if to put herself under his protection.  The 
captain smiled again but said not a word.  He remained seated, his 
sword across his knees and his eyes plunged into space, lost in a 
reverie.

It was already ten o'clock.  The heat had become very great.  A 
heavy silence prevailed.  In the courtyard, in the shadows of the 
sheds, the soldiers had begun to eat their soup.  Not a sound came 
from the village; all its inhabitants had barricaded the doors and 
windows of their houses.  A dog, alone upon the highway, howled.  
From the neighboring forests and meadows, swooning in the heat, came 
a prolonged and distant voice made up of all the scattered breaths.  
A cuckoo sang.  Then the silence grew more intense.

Suddenly in that slumbering air a shot was heard.  The captain 
leaped briskly to his feet; the soldiers left their plates of soup, 
yet half full.  In a few seconds everybody was at the post of duty; 
from bottom to top the mill was occupied.  Meanwhile the captain, 
who had gone out upon the road, had discovered nothing; to the right 
and to the left the highway stretched out, empty and white.  A 
second shot was heard, and still nothing visible, not even a shadow.  
But as he was returning the captain perceived in the direction of 
Gagny, between two trees, a light puff of smoke whirling away like 
thistledown.  The wood was calm and peaceful.

"The bandits have thrown themselves into the forest," he muttered.  
"They know we are here."

Then the firing continued, growing more and more vigorous, between 
the French soldiers posted around the mill and the Prussians hidden 
behind the trees.  The balls whistled above the Morelle without 
damaging either side.  The fusillade was irregular, the shots coming 
from every bush, and still only the little puffs of smoke, tossed 
gently by the breeze, were seen.  This lasted nearly two hours.  The 
officer hummed a tune with an air of indifference.  Francoise and 
Dominique, who had remained in the courtyard, raised themselves on 
tiptoe and looked over a low wall.  They were particularly 
interested in a little soldier posted on the shore of the Morelle, 
behind the remains of an old bateau; he stretched himself out flat 
on the ground, watched, fired and then glided into a ditch a trifle 
farther back to reload his gun; and his movements were so droll, so 
tricky and so supple, that they smiled as they looked at him.  He 
must have perceived the head of a Prussian, for he arose quickly and 
brought his weapon to his shoulder, but before he could fire he 
uttered a cry, fell and rolled into the ditch, where for an instant 
his legs twitched convulsively like the claws of a chicken just 
killed.  The little soldier had received a ball full in the breast.  
He was the first man slain.  Instinctively Francoise seized 
Dominique's hand and clasped it with a nervous contraction.

"Move away," said the captain.  "You are within range of the balls."

At that moment a sharp little thud was heard in the old elm, and a 
fragment of a branch came whirling down.  But the two young folks 
did not stir; they were nailed to the spot by anxiety to see what 
was going on.  On the edge of the wood a Prussian had suddenly come 
out from behind a tree as from a theater stage entrance, beating the 
air with his hands and falling backward.  Nothing further moved; the 
two corpses seemed asleep in the broad sunlight; not a living soul 
was seen in the scorching country.  Even the crack of the fusillade 
had ceased.  The Morelle alone whispered in its clear tones.

Pere Merlier looked at the captain with an air of surprise, as if to 
ask him if the struggle was over.

"They are getting ready for something worse," muttered the officer.  
"Don't trust appearances.  Move away from there."

He had not finished speaking when there was a terrible discharge of 
musketry.  The great elm was riddled, and a host of leaves shot into 
the air.  The Prussians had happily fired too high.  Dominique 
dragged, almost carried, Francoise away, while Pere Merlier followed 
them, shouting:

"Go down into the cellar; the walls are solid!"

But they did not heed him; they entered the huge hall where ten 
soldiers were waiting in silence, watching through the chinks in the 
closed window shutters.  The captain was alone in the courtyard, 
crouching behind the little wall, while the furious discharges 
continued.  Without, the soldiers he had posted gave ground only 
foot by foot.  However, they re-entered one by one, crawling, when 
the enemy had dislodged them from their hiding places.  Their orders 
were to gain time and not show themselves, that the Prussians might 
remain in ignorance as to what force was before them.  Another hour 
went by.  As a sergeant arrived, saying that but two or three more 
men remained without, the captain glanced at his watch, muttering:

"Half-past two o'clock.  We must hold the position four hours 
longer."

He caused the great gate of the courtyard to be closed, and every 
preparation was made for an energetic resistance.  As the Prussians 
were on the opposite side of the Morelle, an immediate assault was 
not to be feared.  There was a bridge two kilometers away, but they 
evidently were not aware of its existence, and it was hardly likely 
that they would attempt to ford the river.  The officer, therefore, 
simply ordered the highway to be watched.  Every effort would be 
made in the direction of the country.

Again the fusillade had ceased.  The mill seemed dead beneath the 
glowing sun.  Not a shutter was open; no sound came from the 
interior.  At length, little by little, the Prussians showed 
themselves at the edge of the forest of Gagny.  They stretched their 
necks and grew bold.  In the mill several soldiers had already 
raised their guns to their shoulders, but the captain cried:

"No, no; wait.  Let them come nearer."

They were exceedingly prudent, gazing at the mill with a suspicious 
air.  The silent and somber old structure with its curtains of ivy 
filled them with uneasiness.  Nevertheless, they advanced.  When 
fifty of them were in the opposite meadow the officer uttered the 
single word:

"Fire!"

A crash was heard; isolated shots followed.  Francoise, all of a 
tremble, had mechanically put her hands to her ears.  Dominique, 
behind the soldiers, looked on; when the smoke had somewhat lifted 
he saw three Prussians stretched upon their backs in the center of 
the meadow.  The others had thrown themselves behind the willows and 
poplars.  Then the siege began.

For more than an hour the mill was riddled with balls.  They dashed 
against the old walls like hail.  When they struck the stones they 
were heard to flatten and fall into the water.  They buried 
themselves in the wood with a hollow sound.  Occasionally a sharp 
crack announced that the mill wheel had been hit.  The soldiers in 
the interior were careful of their shots; they fired only when they 
could take aim.  From time to time the captain consulted his watch.  
As a ball broke a shutter and plowed into the ceiling he said to 
himself:

"Four o'clock.  We shall never be able to hold out!"

Little by little the terrible fusillade weakened the old mill.  A 
shutter fell into the water, pierced like a bit of lace, and it was 
necessary to replace it with a mattress.  Pere Merlier constantly 
exposed himself to ascertain the extent of the damage done to his 
poor wheel, the cracking of which made his heart ache.  All would be 
over with it this time; never could he repair it.  Dominique had 
implored Francoise to withdraw, but she refused to leave him; she 
was seated behind a huge oaken clothespress, which protected her.  A 
ball, however, struck the clothespress, the sides of which gave 
forth a hollow sound.  Then Dominique placed himself in front of 
Francoise.  He had not yet fired a shot; he held his gun in his hand 
but was unable to approach the windows, which were altogether 
occupied by the soldiers.  At each discharge the floor shook.

"Attention!  Attention!" suddenly cried the captain.

He had just seen a great dark mass emerge from the wood.  
Immediately a formidable platoon fire opened.  It was like a 
waterspout passing over the mill.  Another shutter was shattered, 
and through the gaping opening of the window the balls entered.  Two 
soldiers rolled upon the floor.  One of them lay like a stone; they 
pushed the body against the wall because it was in the way.  The 
other twisted in agony, begging his comrades to finish him, but they 
paid no attention to him.  The balls entered in a constant stream; 
each man took care of himself and strove to find a loophole through 
which to return the fire.  A third soldier was hit; he uttered not a 
word; he fell on the edge of a table, with eyes fixed and haggard.  
Opposite these dead men Francoise, stricken with horror, had 
mechanically pushed away her chair to sit on the floor against the 
wall; she thought she would take up less room there and not be in so 
much danger.  Meanwhile the soldiers had collected all the 
mattresses of the household and partially stopped up the windows 
with them.  The hall was filled with wrecks, with broken weapons and 
demolished furniture.

"Five o'clock," said the captain.  "Keep up your courige!  They are 
about to try to cross the river!"

At that moment Francoise uttered a cry.  A ball which had ricocheted 
had grazed her forehead.  Several drops of blood appeared.  
Dominique stared at her; then, approaching the window, he fired his 
first shot.  Once started, he did not stop.  He loaded and fired 
without heeding what was passing around him, but from time to time 
he glanced at Francoise.  He was very deliberate and aimed with 
care.  The Prussians, keeping beside the poplars, attempted the 
passage of the Morelle, as the captain had predicted, but as soon as 
a man strove to cross he fell, shot in the head by Dominique.  The 
captain, who had his eyes on the young man, was amazed.  He 
complimented him, saying that he should be glad to have many such 
skillful marksmen.  Dominique did not hear him.  A ball cut his 
shoulder; another wounded his arm, but he continued to fire.

There were two more dead men.  The mangled mattresses no longer 
stopped the windows.  The last discharge seemed as if it would have 
carried away the mill.  The position had ceased to be tenable.  
Nevertheless, the captain said firmly:

"Hold your ground for half an hour more!"

Now he counted the minutes.  He had promised his chiefs to hold the 
enemy in check there until evening, and he would not give an inch 
before the hour he had fixed on for the retreat.  He preserved his 
amiable air and smiled upon Francoise to reassure her.  He had 
picked up the gun of a dead soldier and himself was firing.

Only four soldiers remained in the hall.  The Prussians appeared in 
a body on the other side of the Morelle, and it was clear that they 
intended speedily to cross the river.  A few minutes more elapsed.  
The stubborn captain would not order the retreat.  Just then a 
sergeant hastened to him and said:

"They are upon the highway; they will take us in the rear!"

The Prussians must have found the bridge.  The captain pulled out 
his watch and looked at it.

"Five minutes longer," he said.  "They cannot get here before that 
time!"

Then at six o'clock exactly he at last consented to lead his men out 
through a little door which opened into a lane.  From there they 
threw themselves into a ditch; they gained the forest of Sauval.  
Before taking his departure the captain bowed very politely to Pere 
Merlier and made his excuses, adding:

"Amuse them!  We will return!"

Dominique was now alone in the hall.  He was still firing, hearing 
nothing, understanding nothing.  He felt only the need of defending 
Francoise.  He had not the least suspicion in the world that the 
soldiers had retreated.  He aimed and killed his man at every shot.  
Suddenly there was a loud noise.  The Prussians had entered the 
courtyard from behind.  Dominique fired a last; shot, and they fell 
upon him while his gun was yet smoking.

Four men held him.  Others vociferated around him in a frightful 
language.  They were ready to slaughter him on the spot.  Francoise, 
with a supplicating look, had cast herself before him.  But an 
officer entered and ordered the prisoner to be delivered up to him.  
After exchanging a few words in German with the soldiers he turned 
toward Dominique and said to him roughly in very good French:

"You will be shot in two hours!"



CHAPTER III

THE FLIGHT


It was a settled rule of the German staff that every Frenchman, not 
belonging to the regular army, taken with arms in his hands should 
be shot.  The militia companies themselves were not recognized as 
belligerents.  By thus making terrible examples of the peasants who 
defended their homes, the Germans hoped to prevent the levy en 
masse, which they feared.

The officer, a tall, lean man of fifty, briefly questioned 
Dominique.  Although he spoke remarkably pure French he had a 
stiffness altogether Prussian.

"Do you belong to this district?" he asked.

"No; I am a Belgian," answered the young man.

"Why then did you take up arms?  The fighting did not concern you!"

Dominique made no reply.  At that moment the officer saw Francoise 
who was standing by, very pale, listening; upon her white forehead 
her slight wound had put a red bar.  He looked at the young folks, 
one after the other, seemed to understand matters and contented 
himself with adding:

"You do not deny having fired, do you?"

"I fired as often as I could!" responded Dominique tranquilly.

This confession was useless, for he was black with powder, covered 
with sweat and stained with a few drops of blood which had flowed 
from the scratch on his shoulder.

"Very well," said the officer.  "You will be shot in two hours!"

Francoise did not cry out.  She clasped her hands and raised them 
with a gesture of mute despair.  The officer noticed this gesture.  
Two soldiers had taken Dominique to a neighboring apartment, where 
they were to keep watch over him.  The young girl had fallen upon a 
chair, totally overcome; she could not weep; she was suffocating.  
The officer had continued to examine her.  At last he spoke to her.

"Is that young man your brother?" he demanded.

She shook her head negatively.  The German stood stiffly on his feet 
with out a smile.  Then after a short silence he again asked:

"Has he lived long in the district?"

She nodded affirmatively.

"In that case, he ought to be thoroughly acquainted with the 
neighboring forests."

This time she spoke.

"He is thoroughly acquainted with them, monsieur," she said, looking 
at him with considerable surprise.

He said nothing further to her but turned upon his heel, demanding 
that the mayor of the village should be brought to him.  But 
Francoise had arisen with a slight blush on her countenance; 
thinking that she had seized the aim of the officer's questions, she 
had recovered hope.  She herself ran to find her father.

Pere Merlier, as soon as the firing had ceased, had quickly 
descended to the wooden gallery to examine his wheel.  He adored his 
daughter; he had a solid friendship for Dominique, his future son-
in-law, but his wheel also held a large place in his heart.  Since 
the two young ones, as he called them, had come safe and sound out 
of the fight, he thought of his other tenderness, which had suffered 
greatly.  Bent over the huge wooden carcass, he was studying its 
wounds with a sad air.  Five buckets were shattered to pieces; the 
central framework was riddled.  He thrust his fingers in the bullet 
holes to measure their depth; he thought how he could repair all 
these injuries.  Francoise found him already stopping up the clefts 
with rubbish and moss.

"Father," she said, "you are wanted."

And she wept at last as she told him what she had just heard.  Pere 
Merlier tossed his head.  People were not shot in such a summary 
fashion.  The matter must be looked after.  He re-entered the mill 
with his silent and tranquil air.  When the officer demanded of him 
provisions for his men he replied that the inhabitants of Rocreuse 
were not accustomed to be treated roughly and that nothing would be 
obtained from them if violence were employed.  He would see to 
everything but on condition that he was not interfered with.  The 
officer at first seemed irritated by his calm tone; then he gave way 
before the old man's short and clear words.  He even called him back 
and asked him:

"What is the name of that wood opposite?"

"The forest of Sauval."

"What is its extent?"

The miller looked at him fixedly.

"I do not know," he answered.

And he went away.  An hour later the contribution of war in 
provisions and money, demanded by the officer, was in the courtyard 
of the mill.  Night came on.  Francoise watched with anxiety the 
movements of the soldiers.  She hung about the room in which 
Dominique was imprisoned.  Toward seven o'clock she experienced a 
poignant emotion.  She saw the officer enter the prisoner's 
apartment and for a quarter of an hour heard their voices in loud 
conversation.  For an instant the officer reappeared upon the 
threshold to give an order in German, which she did not understand, 
but when twelve men ranged themselves in the courtyard, their guns 
on their shoulders, she trembled and felt as if about to faint.  All 
then was over: the execution was going to take place.  The twelve 
men stood there ten minutes, Dominique's voice continuing to be 
raised in a tone of violent refusal.  Finally the officer came out, 
saying, as he roughly shut the door:

"Very well; reflect.  I give you until tomorrow morning.'

And with a gesture he ordered the twelve men to break ranks.  
Francoise was stupefied.  Pere Merlier, who had been smoking his 
pipe and looking at the platoon simply with an air of curiosity, 
took her by the arm with paternal gentleness.  He led her to her 
chamber.

"Be calm," he said, "and try to sleep.  Tomorrow, when it is light, 
we will see what can be done."

As he withdrew he prudently locked her in.  It was his opinion that 
women were good for nothing and that they spoiled everything when 
they took a hand in a serious affair.  But Francoise did not retire.  
She sat for a long while upon the side of her bed, listening to the 
noises of the house.  The German soldiers encamped in the courtyard 
sang and laughed; they must have been eating and drinking until 
eleven o'clock, for the racket did not cease an instant.  In the 
mill itself heavy footsteps resounded from time to time, without 
doubt those of the sentinels who were being relieved.  But she was 
interested most by the sounds she could distinguish in the apartment 
beneath her chamber.  Many times she stretched herself out at full 
length and put her ear to the floor.  That apartment was the one in 
which Dominique was confined.  He must have been walking back and 
forth from the window to the wall, for she long heard the regular 
cadence of his steps.  Then deep silence ensued; he had doubtless 
seated himself.  Finally every noise ceased and all was as if 
asleep.  When slumber appeared to her to have settled on the house 
she opened her window as gently as possible and leaned her elbows on 
the sill.

Without, the night had a warm serenity.  The slender crescent of the 
moon, which was sinking behind the forest of Sauval, lit up the 
country with the glimmer of a night lamp.  The lengthened shadows of 
the tall trees barred the meadows with black, while the grass in 
uncovered spots assumed the softness of greenish velvet.  But 
Francoise did not pause to admire the mysterious charms of the 
night.  She examined the country, searching for the sentinels whom 
the Germans had posted obliquely.  She clearly saw their shadows 
extending like the rounds of a ladder along the Morelle.  Only one 
was before the mill, on the other shore of the river, beside a 
willow, the branches of which dipped in the water.  Francoise saw 
him plainly.  He was a tall man and was standing motionless, his 
face turned toward the sky with the dreamy air of a shepherd.

When she had carefully inspected the locality she again seated 
herself on her bed.  She remained there an hour, deeply absorbed.  
Then she listened once more: there was not a sound in the mill.  She 
returned to the window and glanced out, but doubtless one of the 
horns of the moon, which was still visible behind the trees, made 
her uneasy, for she resumed her waiting attitude.  At last she 
thought the proper time had come.  The night was as black as jet; 
she could no longer see the sentinel opposite; the country spread 
out like a pool of ink.  She strained her ear for an instant and 
made her decision.  Passing near the window was an iron ladder, the 
bars fastened to the wall, which mounted from the wheel to the 
garret and formerly enabled the millers to reach certain machinery; 
afterward the mechanism had been altered, and for a long while the 
ladder had been hidden under the thick ivy which covered that side 
of the mill.

Francoise bravely climbed out of her window and grasped one of the 
bars of the ladder.  She began to descend.  Her skirts embarrassed 
her greatly.  Suddenly a stone was detached from the wall and fell 
into the Morelle with a loud splash.  She stopped with an icy shiver 
of fear.  Then she realized that the waterfall with its continuous 
roar would drown every noise she might make, and she descended more 
courageously, feeling the ivy with her foot, assuring herself that 
the rounds were firm.  When she was at the height of the chamber 
which served as Dominique's prison she paused.  An unforeseen 
difficulty nearly caused her to lose all her courage: the window of 
the chamber was not directly below that of her apartment.  She hung 
off from the ladder, but when she stretched out her arm her hand 
encountered only the wall.  Must she, then, ascend without pushing 
her plan to completion?  Her arms were fatigued; the murmur of the 
Morelle beneath her commenced to make her dizzy.  Then she tore from 
the wall little fragments of plaster and threw them against 
Dominique's window.  He did not hear; he was doubtless asleep.  She 
crumbled more plaster from the wall, scraping the skin off her 
fingers.  She was utterly exhausted; she felt herself falling 
backward, when Dominique at last softly opened the window.

"It is I!" she murmured.  "Catch me quickly; I'm falling!"

It was the first time that she had addressed him familiarly.  
Leaning out, he seized her and drew her into the chamber.  There she 
gave vent to a flood of tears, stifling her sobs that she might not 
be heard.  Then by a supreme effort she calmed herself.

"Are you guarded?" she asked in a low voice.

Dominique, still stupefied at seeing her thus, nodded his head 
affirmatively, pointing to the door.  On the other side they heard 
someone snoring; the sentinel, yielding to sleep, had thrown himself 
on the floor against the door, arguing that by disposing himself 
thus the prisoner could not escape.

"You must fly," resumed Francoise excitedly.  "I have come to beg 
you to do so and to bid you farewell."

But he did not seem to hear her.  He repeated:

"What?  Is it you; is it you?  Oh, what fear you caused me!  You 
might have killed yourself!"

He seized her hands; he kissed them.

"How I love you, Francoise!" he murmured.  "You are as courageous as 
good.  I had only one dread: that I should die without seeing you 
again.  But you are here, and now they can shoot me.  When I have 
passed a quarter of an hour with you I shall be ready."

Little by little he had drawn her to him, and she leaned her head 
upon his shoulder.  The danger made them dearer to each other.  They 
forgot everything in that warm clasp.

"Ah, Francoise," resumed Dominique in a caressing voice, "this is 
Saint Louis's Day, the day, so long awaited, of our marriage.  
Nothing has been able to separate us, since we are both here alone, 
faithful to the appointment.  Is not this our wedding morning?"

"Yes, yes," she repeated, "it is our wedding morning."

They tremblingly exchanged a kiss.  But all at once she disengaged 
herself from Dominique's arms; she remembered the terrible reality.

"You must fly; you must fly," she whispered.  "There is not a minute 
to be lost!"

And as he stretched out his arms in the darkness to clasp her again, 
she said tenderly:

"Oh, I implore you to listen to me!  If you die I shall die also!  
In an hour it will be light.  I want you to go at once."

Then rapidly she explained her plan.  The iron ladder descended to 
the mill wheel; there he could climb down the buckets and get into 
the boat which was hidden away in a nook.  Afterward it would be 
easy for him to reach the other bank of the river and escape.

"But what of the sentinels?" he asked.

"There is only one, opposite, at the foot of the first willow."

"What if he should see me and attempt to give an alarm?"

Francoise shivered.  She placed in his hand a knife she had brought 
with her.  There was a brief silence.

"What is to become of your father and yourself?" resumed Domiriique.  
"No, I cannot fly!  When I am gone those soldiers will, perhaps, 
massacre you both!  You do not know them.  They offered me my life 
if I would consent to guide them through the forest of Sauval.  When 
they discover my escape they will be capable of anything!"

The young girl did not stop to argue.  She said simply in reply to 
all the reasons he advanced:

"Out of love for me, fly!  If you love me, Dominique, do not remain 
here another moment!"

Then she promised to climb back to her chamber.  No one would know 
that she had helped him.  She finally threw her arms around him to 
convince him with an embrace, with a burst of extraordinary love.  
He was vanquished.  He asked but one more question:

"Can you swear to me that your father knows what you have done and 
that he advises me to fly?"

"My father sent me!" answered Francoise boldly.

She told a falsehood.  At that moment she had only one immense need: 
to know that he was safe, to escape from the abominable thought that 
the sun would be the signal for his death.  When he was far away 
every misfortune might fall upon her; that would seem delightful to 
her from the moment he was secure.  The selfishness of her 
tenderness desired that he should live before everything.

"Very well," said Dominique; "I will do what you wish."

They said nothing more.  Dominique reopened the window.  But 
suddenly a sound froze them.  The door was shaken, and they thought 
that it was about to be opened.  Evidently a patrol had heard their 
voices.  Standing locked in each other's arms, they waited in 
unspeakable anguish.  The door was shaken a second time, but it did 
not open.  They uttered low sighs of relief; they comprehended that 
the soldier who was asleep against the door must have turned over.  
In fact, silence succeeded; the snoring was resumed.

Dominique exacted that Francoise should ascend to her chamber before 
he departed.  He clasped her in his arms and bade her a mute adieu.  
Then he aided her to seize the ladder and clung to it in his turn.  
But he refused to descend a single round until convinced that she 
was in her apartment.  When Francoise had entered her window she let 
fall in a voice as light as a breath:

"Au revoir, my love!"

She leaned her elbows on the sill and strove to follow Dominique 
with her eyes.  The night was yet very dark.  She searched for the 
sentinel but could not see him; the willow alone made a pale stain 
in the midst of the gloom.  For an instant she heard the sound 
produced by Dominique's body in passing along the ivy.  Then the 
wheel cracked, and there was a slight agitation in the water which 
told her that the young man had found the boat.  A moment afterward 
she distinguished the somber silhouette of the bateau on the gray 
surface of the Morelle.  Terrible anguish seized upon her.  Each 
instant she thought she heard the sentinel's cry of alarm; the 
smallest sounds scattered through the gloom seemed to her the 
hurried tread of soldiers, the clatter of weapons, the charging of 
guns.  Nevertheless, the seconds elapsed and the country maintained 
its profound peace.  Dominique must have reached the other side of 
the river.  Francoise saw nothing more.  The silence was majestic.  
She heard a shuffling of feet, a hoarse cry and the hollow fall of a 
body.  Afterward the silence grew deeper.  Then as if she had felt 
Death pass by, she stood, chilled through and through, staring into 
the thick night.



CHAPTER IV

A TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE


At dawn a clamor of voices shook the mill.  Pere Merlier opened the 
door of Francoise's chamber.  She went down into the courtyard, pale 
and very calm.  But there she could not repress a shiver as she saw 
the corpse of a Prussian soldier stretched out on a cloak beside the 
well.

Around the body troops gesticulated, uttering cries of fury.  Many 
of them shook their fists at the village.  Meanwhile the officer had 
summoned Pere Merlier as the mayor of the commune.

"Look!" he said to him in a voice almost choking with anger.  "There 
lies one of our men who was found assassinated upon the bank of the 
river.  We must make a terrible example, and I count on you to aid 
us in discovering the murderer."

"As you choose," answered the miller with his usual stoicism, "but 
you will find it no easy task."

The officer stooped and drew aside a part of the cloak which hid the 
face of the dead man.  Then appeared a horrible wound.  The sentinel 
had been struck in the throat, and the weapon had remained in the 
cut.  It was a kitchen knife with a black handle.

"Examine that knife," said the officer to Pere Merlier; "perhaps it 
will help us in our search."

The old man gave a start but recovered control of himself 
immediately.  He replied without moving a muscle of his face:

"Everybody in the district has similar knives.  Doubtless your man 
was weary of fighting and put an end to his own life.  It looks like 
it!"

"Mind what you say!" cried the officer furiously.  "I do not know 
what prevents me from setting fire to the four corners of the 
village!"

Happily in his rage he did not notice the deep trouble pictured on 
Francoise's countenance.  She had been forced to sit down on a stone 
bench near the well.  Despite herself her eyes were fixed upon the 
corpse stretched our on the ground almost at her feet.  It was that 
of a tall and handsome man who resembled Dominique, with flaxen hair 
and blue eyes.  This resemblance made her heart ache.  She thought 
that perhaps the dead soldier had left behind him in Germany a 
sweetheart who would weep her eyes out for him.  She recognized her 
knife in the throat of the murdered man.  She had killed him.

The officer was talking of striking Rocreuse with terrible measures, 
when soldiers came running to him.  Dominique's escape had just been 
discovered.  It caused an extreme agitation.  The officer went to 
the apartment in which the prisoner had been confined, looked out of 
the window which had remained open, understood everything and 
returned, exasperated.

Pere Merlier seemed greatly vexed by Dominique's flight.

"The imbecile!" he muttered.  "He has ruined all!"

Francoise heard him and was overcome with anguish.  But the miller 
did not suspect her of complicity in the affair.  He tossed his 
head, saying to her in an undertone:

"We are in a nice scrape!"

"It was that wretch who assassinated the soldier!  I am sure of it!" 
cried the officer.  "He has undoubtedly reached the forest.  But he 
must be found for us or the village shall pay for him!"

Turning to the miller, he said:

"See here, you ought to know where he is hidden!"

Pere Merlier laughed silently, pointing to the wide stretch of 
wooden hills.

"Do you expect to find a man in there?" he said.

"Oh, there must be nooks there with which you are acquainted.  I 
will give you ten men.  You must guide them."

"As you please.  But it will take a week to search all the wood in 
the vicinity."

The old man's tranquillity enraged the officer.  In fact, the latter 
comprehended the asburdity of this search.  At that moment he saw 
Francoise, pale and trembling, on the bench.  The anxious attitude 
of the young girl struck him.  He was silent for an instant, during 
which he in turn examined the miller and his daughter.

At length he demanded roughly of the old man:

"Is not that fellow your child's lover?"

Pere Merlier grew livid and seemed about to hurl himself upon the 
officer to strangle him.  He stiffened himself but made no answer.  
Francoise buried her face in her hands.

"Yes, that's it!" continued the Prussian.  "And you or your daughter 
helped him to escape!  One of you is his accomplice!  For the last 
time, will you give him up to us?"

The miller uttered not a word.  He turned away and looked into space 
with an air of indifference, as if the officer had not addressed 
him.  This brought the latter's rage to a head.

"Very well!" he shouted.  "You shall be shot in his place!"

And he again ordered out the platoon of execution.  Pere Merlier 
remained as stoical as ever.  He hardly even shrugged his shoulders; 
all this drama appeared to him in bad taste.  Without doubt he did 
not believe that they would shoot a man so lightly.  But when the 
platoon drew up before him he said gravely:

"So it is serious, is it?  Go on with your bloody work then!  If you 
must have a victim I will do as well as another!"

But Francoise started up, terrified, stammering:

"In pity, monsieur, do no harm to my father!  Kill me in his stead!  
I aided Dominique to fly!  I alone am guilty!"

"Hush, my child!" cried Pere Merlier.  "Why do you tell an untruth?  
She passed the night locked in her chamber, monsieur.  She tells a 
falsehood, I assure you!"

"No, I do not tell a falsehood!" resumed the young girl ardently.  
"I climbed out of my window and went down the iron ladder; I urged 
Dominique to fly.  This is the truth, the whole truth!"

The old man became very pale.  He saw clearly in her eyes that she 
did not lie, and her story terrified him.  Ah, these children with 
their hearts, how they spoil everything!  Then he grew angry and 
exclaimed:

"She is mad; do not heed her.  She tells you stupid tales.  Come, 
finish your work!"

She still protested.  She knelt, clasping her hands.  The officer 
tranquilly watched this dolorous struggle.

"MON DIEU!" he said at last.  "I take your father because I have not 
the other.  Find the fugitive and the old man shall be set at 
liberty!"

She gazed at him with staring eyes, astonished at the atrocity of 
the proposition.

"How horrible!" she murmured.  "Where do you think I can find 
Dominique at this hour?  He has departed; I know no more about him."

"Come, make your choice--him or your father."

"Oh, MON DIEU!  How can I choose?  If I knew where Dominique was I 
could not choose!  You are cutting my heart.  I would rather die at 
once.  Yes, it would be the sooner over.  Kill me, I implore you, 
kill me!"

This scene of despair and tears finally made the officer impatient.  
He cried out:

"Enough!  I will be merciful.  I consent to give you two hours.  If 
in that time your lover is not here your father will be shot in his 
place!"

He caused Pere Merlier to be taken to the chamber which had served 
as Dominique's prison.  The old man demanded tobacco and began to 
smoke.  Upon his impassible face not the slightest emotion was 
visible.  But when alone, as he smoked, he shed two big tears which 
ran slowly down his cheeks.  His poor, dear child, how she was 
suffering!

Francoise remained in the middle of the courtyard.  Prussian 
soldiers passed, laughing.  Some of them spoke to her, uttered jokes 
she could not understand.  She stared at the door through which her 
father had disappeared.  With a slow movement she put her hand to 
her forehead, as if to prevent it from bursting.

The officer turned upon his heel, saying:

"You have two hours.  Try to utilize them."

She had two hours.  This phrase buzzed in her ears.  Then 
mechanically she quitted the courtyard; she walked straight ahead.  
Where should she go?--what should she do?  She did not even try to 
make a decision because she well understood the inutility of her 
efforts.  However, she wished to see Dominique.  They could have an 
understanding together; they might, perhaps, find an expedient.  And 
amid the confusion of her thoughts she went down to the shore of the 
Morelle, which she crossed below the sluice at a spot where there 
were huge stones.  Her feet led her beneath the first willow, in the 
corner of the meadow.  As she stooped she saw a pool of blood which 
made her turn pale.  It was there the murder had been committed.  
She followed the track of Dominique in the trodden grass; he must 
have run, for she perceived a line of long footprints stretching 
across the meadow.  Then farther on she lost these traces.  But in a 
neighboring field she thought she found them again.  The new trail 
conducted her to the edge of the forest, where every indication was 
effaced.

Francoise, nevertheless, plunged beneath the trees.  It solaced her 
to be alone.  She sat down for an instant, but at the thought that 
time was passing she leaped to her feet.  How long had it been since 
she left the mill?  Five minutes?--half an hour?  She had lost all 
conception of time.  Perhaps Dominique had concealed himself in a 
copse she knew of, where they had one afternoon eaten filberts 
together.  She hastened to the copse, searched it.  Only a blackbird 
flew away, uttering its soft, sad note.  Then she thought he might 
have taken refuge in a hollow of the rocks, where it had sometimes 
been his custom to lie in wait for game, but the hollow of the rocks 
was empty.  What good was it to hunt for him?  She would never find 
him, but little by little the desire to discover him took entire 
possession of her, and she hastened her steps.  The idea that he 
might have climbed a tree suddenly occurred to her.  She advanced 
with uplifted eyes, and that he might be made aware of her presence 
she called him every fifteen or twenty steps.  Cuckoos answered; a 
breath of wind which passed through the branches made her believe 
that he was there and was descending.  Once she even imagined she 
saw him; she stopped, almost choked, and wished to fly.  What was 
she to say to him?  Had she come to take him back to be shot?  Oh 
no, she would not tell him what had happened.  She would cry out to 
him to escape, not to remain in the neighborhood.  Then the thought 
that her father was waiting for her gave her a sharp pain.  She fell 
upon the turf, weeping, crying aloud:

"MON DIEU!  MON DIEU!  Why am I here?"

She was mad to have come.  And as if seized with fear, she ran; she 
sought to leave the forest.  Three times she deceived herself; she 
thought she never again would find the mill, when she entered a 
meadow just opposite Rocreuse.  As soon as she saw the village she 
paused.  Was she going to return alone?  She was still hesitating 
when a voice softly called:

"Francoise!  Francoise!"

And she saw Dominique, who had raised his head above the edge of a 
ditch.  Just God!  She had found him!  Did heaven wish his death?  
She restrained a cry; she let herself glide into the ditch.

"Are you searching for me?" asked the young man.

"Yes," she answered, her brain in a whirl, not knowing what she 
said.

"What has happened?"

She lowered her eyes, stammered:

"Nothing.  I was uneasy; I wanted to see you."

Then, reassured, he explained to her that he had resolved not to go 
away.  He was doubtful about the safety of herself and her father.  
Those Prussian wretches were fully capable of taking vengeance upon 
women and old men.  But everything was getting on well.  He added 
with a laugh:

"Our wedding will take place in a week--I am sure of it."

Then as she remained overwhelmed, he grew grave again and said:

"But what ails you?  You are concealing something from me!"

"No; I swear it to you.  I am out of breath from running."

He embraced her, saying that it was imprudent for them to be 
talking, and he wished to climb out of the ditch to return to the 
forest.  She restrained him.  She trembled.

"Listen," she said: "it would, perhaps, be wise for you to remain 
where you are.  No one is searching for you; you have nothing to 
fear."

"Francoise, you are concealing something from me," he repeated.

Again she swore that she was hiding nothing.  She had simply wished 
to know that he was near her.  And she stammered forth still further 
reasons.  She seemed so strange to him that he now could not be 
induced to flee.  Besides, he had faith in the return of the French.  
Troops had been seen in the direction of Sauval.

"Ah, let them hurry; let them get here as soon as possible," she 
murmured fervently.

At that moment eleven o'clock sounded from the belfry of Rocreuse.  
The strokes were clear and distinct.  She arose with a terrified 
look; two hours had passed since she quitted the mill.

"Hear me," she said rapidly: "if we have need of you I will wave my 
handkerchief from my chamber window."

And she departed on a run, while Dominique, very uneasy, stretched 
himself out upon the edge of the ditch to watch the mill.  As she 
was about to enter Rocreuse, Francoise met an old beggar, Pere 
Bontemps, who knew everybody in the district.  He bowed to her; he 
had just seen the miller in the midst of the Prussians; then, making 
the sign of the cross and muttering broken words, he went on his 
way.

"The two hours have passed," said the officer when Francoise 
appeared.

Pere Merlier was there, seated upon the bench beside the well.  He 
was smoking.  The young girl again begged, wept, sank on her knees.  
She wished to gain time.  The hope of seeing the French return had 
increased in her, and while lamenting she thought she heard in the 
distance, the measured tramp of an army.  Oh, if they would come, if 
they would deliver them all?

"Listen, monsieur," she said: "an hour, another hour; you can grant 
us another hour!"

But the officer remained inflexible.  He even ordered two men to 
seize her and take her away, that they might quietly proceed with 
the execution of the old man.  Then a frightful struggle took place 
in Francoise's heart.  She could not allow her father to be thus 
assassinated.  No, no; she would die rather with Dominique.  She was 
running toward her chamber when Dominique himself entered the 
courtyard.

The officer and the soldiers uttered a shout of triumph.  But the 
young man, calmly, with a somewhat severe look, went up to 
Francoise, as if she had been the only person present.

"You did wrong," he said.  "Why did you not bring me back?  It 
remained for Pere Bontemps to tell me everything.  But I am here!"



CHAPTER V

THE RETURN OF THE FRENCH


It was three o'clock in the afternoon.  Great black clouds, the 
trail of some neighboring storm, had slowly filled the sky.  The 
yellow heavens, the brass covered uniforms, had changed the valley 
of Rocreuse, so gay in the sunlight, into a den of cutthroats full 
of sinister gloom.  The Prussian officer had contented himself with 
causing Dominique to be imprisoned without announcing what fate he 
reserved for him.  Since noon Francoise had been torn by terrible 
anguish.  Despite her father's entreaties she would not quit the 
courtyard.  She was awaiting the French.  But the hours sped on; 
night was approaching, and she suffered the more as all the time 
gained did not seem to be likely to change the frightful denouement.

About three o'clock the Prussians made their preparations for 
departure.  For an instant past the officer had, as on the previous 
day, shut himself up with Dominique.  Francoise realized that the 
young man's life was in balance.  She clasped her hands; she prayed.  
Pere Merlier, beside her, maintained silence and the rigid attitude 
of an old peasant who does not struggle against fate.

"Oh, MON DIEU!  Oh, MON DIEU!" murmured Francoise.  "They are going 
to kill him!"

The miller drew her to him and took her on his knees as if she had 
been a child.

At that moment the officer came out, while behind him two men 
brought Dominique.

"Never!  Never!" cried the latter.  "I am ready to die!"

"Think well," resumed the officer.  "The service you refuse me 
another will render us.  I am generous: I offer you your life.  I 
want you simply to guide us through the forest to Montredon.  There 
must be pathways leading there."

Dominique was silent.

"So you persist in your infatuation, do you?"

"Kill me and end all this!" replied the young man.

Francoise, her hands clasped, supplicated him from afar.  She had 
forgotten everything; she would have advised him to commit an act of 
cowardice.  But Pere Merlier seized her hands that the Prussians 
might not see her wild gestures.

"He is right," he whispered: "it is better to die!"

The platoon of execution was there.  The officer awaited a sign of 
weakness on Dominique's part.  He still expected to conquer him.  No 
one spoke.  In the distance violent crashes of thunder were heard.  
Oppressive heat weighed upon the country.  But suddenly, amid the 
silence, a cry broke forth:

"The French!  The French!"

Yes, the French were at hand.  Upon the Sauval highway, at the edge 
of the wood, the line of red pantaloons could be distinguished.  In 
the mill there was an extraordinary agitation.  The Prussian 
soldiers ran hither and thither with guttural exclamations.  Not a 
shot had yet been fired.

"The French!  The French!" cried Francoise, clapping her hands.

She was wild with joy.  She escaped from her father's grasp; she 
laughed and tossed her arms in the air.  At last they had come and 
come in time, since Dominique was still alive!

A terrible platoon fire, which burst upon her ears like a clap of 
thunder, caused her to turn.  The officer muttered between his 
teeth:

"Before everything, let us settle this affair!"

And with his own hand pushing Dominique against the wall of a shed 
he ordered his men to fire.  When Francoise looked Dominique lay 
upon the ground with blood streaming from his neck and shoulders.

She did not weep; she stood stupefied.  Her eyes grew fixed, and she 
sat down under the shed, a few paces from the body.  She stared at 
it, wringing her hands.  The Prussians had seized Pere Merlier as a 
hostage.

It was a stirring combat.  The officer had rapidly posted his men, 
comprehending that he could not beat a retreat without being cut to 
pieces.  Hence he would fight to the last.  Now the Prussians 
defended the mill, and the French attacked it.  The fusillade began 
with unusual violence.  For half an hour it did not cease.  Then a 
hollow sound was heard, and a ball broke a main branch of the old 
elm.  The French had cannon.  A battery, stationed just above the 
ditch in which Dominique had hidden himself, swept the wide street 
of Rocreuse.  The struggle could not last long.

Ah, the poor mill!  Balls pierced it in every part.  Half of the 
roof was carried away.  Two walls were battered down.  But it was on 
the side of the Morelle that the destruction was most lamentable.  
The ivy, torn from the tottering edifice, hung like rags; the river 
was encumbered with wrecks of all kinds, and through a breach was 
visible Francoise's chamber with its bed, the white curtains of 
which were carefully closed.  Shot followed shot; the old wheel 
received two balls and gave vent to an agonizing groan; the buckets 
were borne off by the current; the framework was crushed.  The soul 
of the gay mill had left it!

Then the French began the assault.  There was a furious fight with 
swords and bayonets.  Beneath the rust-colored sky the valley was 
choked with the dead.  The broad meadows had a wild look with their 
tall, isolated trees and their hedges of poplars which stained them 
with shade.  To the right and to the left the forests were like the 
walls of an ancient ampitheater which enclosed the fighting 
gladiators, while the springs, the fountains and the flowing brooks 
seemed to sob amid the panic of the country.

Beneath the shed Francoise still sat near Dominique's body; she had 
not moved.  Pere Merlier had received a slight wound.  The Prussians 
were exterminated, but the ruined mill was on fire in a dozen 
places.  The French rushed into the courtyard, headed by their 
captain.  It was his first success of the war.  His face beamed with 
triumph.  He waved his sword, shouting:

"Victory!  Victory!"

On seeing the wounded miller, who was endeavoring to comfort 
Francoise, and noticing the body of Dominique, his joyous look 
changed to one of sadness.  Then he knelt beside the young man and, 
tearing open his blouse, put his hand to his heart.

"Thank God!" he cried.  "It is yet beating!  Send for the surgeon!"

At the captain's words Francoise leaped to her feet.

"There is hope!" she cried.  "Oh, tell me there is hope!"

At that moment the surgeon appeared.  He made a hasty examination 
and said:

"The young man is severely hurt, but life is not extinct; he can be 
saved!"  By the surgeon's orders Dominique was transported to a 
neighboring cottage, where he was placed in bed.  His wounds were 
dressed; restoratives were administered, and he soon recovered 
consciousness.  When he opened his eyes he saw Francoise sitting 
beside him and through the open window caught sight of Pere Merlier 
talking with the French captain.  He passed his hand over his 
forehead with a bewildered air and said:

"They did not kill me after all!"

"No," replied Francoise.  "The French came, and their surgeon saved 
you."

Pere Merlier turned and said through the window:

"No talking yet, my young ones!"

In due time Dominique was entirely restored, and when peace again 
blessed the land he wedded his beloved Francoise.

The mill was rebuilt, and Pere Merlier had a new wheel upon which to 
bestow whatever tenderness was not engrossed by his daughter and her 
husband.





CAPTAIN BURLE



CHAPTER I

THE SWINDLE


It was nine o'clock.  The little town of Vauchamp, dark and silent, 
had just retired to bed amid a chilly November rain.  In the Rue des 
Recollets, one of the narrowest and most deserted streets of the 
district of Saint-Jean, a single window was still alight on the 
third floor of an old house, from whose damaged gutters torrents of 
water were falling into the street.  Mme Burle was sitting up before 
a meager fire of vine stocks, while her little grandson Charles 
pored over his lessons by the pale light of a lamp.

The apartment, rented at one hundred and sixty francs per annum, 
consisted of four large rooms which it was absolutely impossible to 
keep warm during the winter.  Mme Burle slept in the largest 
chamber, her son Captain and Quartermaster Burle occupying a 
somewhat smaller one overlooking the street, while little Charles 
had his iron cot at the farther end of a spacious drawing room with 
mildewed hangings, which was never used.  The few pieces of 
furniture belonging to the captain and his mother, furniture of the 
massive style of the First Empire, dented and worn by continuous 
transit from one garrison town to another, almost disappeared from 
view beneath the lofty ceilings whence darkness fell.  The flooring 
of red-colored tiles was cold and hard to the feet; before the 
chairs there were merely a few threadbare little rugs of poverty-
stricken aspect, and athwart this desert all the winds of heaven 
blew through the disjointed doors and windows.

Near the fireplace sat Mme Burle, leaning back in her old yellow 
velvet armchair and watching the last vine branch smoke, with that 
stolid, blank stare of the aged who live within themselves.  She 
would sit thus for whole days together, with her tall figure, her 
long stern face and her thin lips that never smiled.  The widow of a 
colonel who had died just as he was on the point of becoming a 
general, the mother of a captain whom she had followed even in his 
campaigns, she had acquired a military stiffness of bearing and 
formed for herself a code of honor, duty and patriotism which kept 
her rigid, desiccated, as it were, by the stern application of 
discipline.  She seldom, if ever, complained.  When her son had 
become a widower after five years of married life she had undertaken 
the education of little Charles as a matter of course, performing 
her duties with the severity of a sergeant drilling recruits.  She 
watched over the child, never tolerating the slightest waywardness 
or irregularity, but compelling him to sit up till midnight when his 
exercises were not finished, and sitting up herself until he had 
completed them.  Under such implacable despotism Charles, whose 
constitution was delicate, grew up pale and thin, with beautiful 
eyes, inordinately large and clear, shining in his white, pinched 
face.

During the long hours of silence Mme Burle dwelt continuously upon 
one and the same idea: she had been disappointed in her son.  This 
thought sufficed to occupy her mind, and under its influence she 
would live her whole life over again, from the birth of her son, 
whom she had pictured rising amid glory to the highest rank, till 
she came down to mean and narrow garrison life, the dull, monotonous 
existence of nowadays, that stranding in the post of a 
quartermaster, from which Burle would never rise and in which he 
seemed to sink more and more heavily.  And yet his first efforts had 
filled her with pride, and she had hoped to see her dreams realized.  
Burle had only just left Saint-Cyr when he distinguished himself at 
the battle of Solferino, where he had captured a whole battery of 
the enemy's artiliery with merely a handful of men.  For this feat 
he had won the cross; the papers had recorded his heroism, and he 
had become known as one of the bravest soldiers in the army.  But 
gradually the hero had grown stout, embedded in flesh, timorous, 
lazy and satisfied.  In 1870, still a captain, he had been made a 
prisoner in the first encounter, and he returned from Germany quite 
furious, swearing that he would never be caught fighting again, for 
it was too absurd.  Being prevented from leaving the army, as he was 
incapable of embracing any other profession, he applied for and 
obtained the position of captain quartermaster, "a kennel," as he 
called it, "in which he would be left to kick the bucket in peace."  
That day Mme Burle experienced a great internal disruption.  She 
felt that it was all over, and she ever afterward preserved a rigid 
attitude with tightened lips.

A blast of wind shook the Rue des Recollets and drove the rain 
angrily against the windowpanes.  The old lady lifted her eyes from 
the smoking vine roots now dying out, to make sure that Charles was 
not falling asleep over his Latin exercise.  This lad, twelve years 
of age, had become the old lady's supreme hope, the one human being 
in whom she centered her obstinate yearning for glory.  At first she 
had hated him with all the loathing she had felt for his mother, a 
weak and pretty young lacemaker whom the captain had been foolish 
enough to marry when he found out that she would not listen to his 
passionate addresses on any other condition.  Later on, when the 
mother had died and the father had begun to wallow in vice, Mme 
Burle dreamed again in presence of that little ailing child whom she 
found it so hard to rear.  She wanted to see him robust, so that he 
might grow into the hero that Burle had declined to be, and for all 
her cold ruggedness she watched him anxiously, feeling his limbs and 
instilling courage into his soul.  By degrees, blinded by her 
passionate desires, she imagined that she had at last found the man 
of the family.  The boy, whose temperament was of a gentle, dreamy 
character, had a physical horror of soldiering, but as he lived in 
mortal dread of his grandmother and was extremely shy and 
submissive, he would echo all she said and resignedly express his 
intention of entering the army when he grew up.

Mme Burle observed that the exercise was not progressing.  In fact, 
little Charles, overcome by the deafening noise of the storm, was 
dozing, albeit his pen was between his fingers and his eyes were 
staring at the paper.  The old lady at once struck the edge of the 
table with her bony hand; whereupon the lad started, opened his 
dictionary and hurriedly began to turn over the leaves.  Then, still 
preserving silence, his grandmother drew the vine roots together on 
the hearth and unsuccessfully attempted to rekindle the fire.

At the time when she had still believed in her son she had 
sacrificed her small income, which he had squandered in pursuits she 
dared not investigate.  Even now he drained the household; all its 
resources went to the streets, and it was through him that she lived 
in penury, with empty rooms and cold kitchen.  She never spoke to 
him of all those things, for with her sense of discipline he 
remained the master.  Only at times she shuddered at the sudden fear 
that Burle might someday commit some foolish misdeed which would 
prevent Charles from entering the army.

She was rising up to fetch a fresh piece of wood in the kitchen when 
a fearful hurricane fell upon the house, making the doors rattle, 
tearing off a shutter and whirling the water in the broken gutters 
like a spout against the window.  In the midst of the uproar a ring 
at the bell startled the old lady.  Who could it be at such an hour 
and in such weather?  Burle never returned till after midnight, if 
he came home at all.  However, she went to the door.  An officer 
stood before her, dripping with rain and swearing savagely.

"Hell and thunder!" he growled.  "What cursed weather!"

It was Major Laguitte, a brave old soldier who had served under 
Colonel Burle during Mme Burle's palmy days.  He had started in life 
as a drummer boy and, thanks to his courage rather than his 
intellect, had attained to the command of a battalion, when a 
painful infirmity--the contraction of the muscles of one of his 
thighs, due to a wound--obliged him to accept the post of major.  He 
was slightly lame, but it would have been imprudent to tell him so, 
as he refused to own it.

"What, you, Major?" said Mme Burle with growing astonishment.

"Yes, thunder," grumbled Laguitte, "and I must be confoundedly fond 
of you to roam the streets on such a night as this.  One would think 
twice before sending even a parson out."

He shook himself, and little rivulets fell from his huge boots onto 
the floor.  Then he looked round him.

"I particularly want to see Burle.  Is the lazy beggar already in 
bed?"

"No, he is not in yet," said the old woman in her harsh voice.

The major looked furious, and, raising his voice, he shouted: "What, 
not at home?  But in that case they hoaxed me at the cafe, Melanie's 
establishment, you know.  I went there, and a maid grinned at me, 
saying that the captain had gone home to bed.  Curse the girl!  I 
suspected as much and felt like pulling her ears!"

After this outburst he became somewhat calmer, stamping about the 
room in an undecided way, withal seeming greatly disturbed.  Mme 
Burle looked at him attentively.

"Is it the captain personally whom you want to see?" she said at 
last.

"Yes," he answered.

"Can I not tell him what you have to say?"

"No."

She did not insist but remained standing without taking her eyes off 
the major, who did not seem able to make up his mind to leave.  
Finally in a fresh burst of rage he exclaimed with an oath: "It 
can't be helped.  As I am here yot may as well know--after all, it 
is, perhaps, best."

He sat down before the chimney piece, stretching out his muddy boots 
as if a bright fire had been burning.  Mme Burle was about to resume 
her own seat when she remarked that Charles, overcome by fatigue, 
had dropped his head between the open pages of his dictionary.  The 
arrival of the major had at first interested him, but, seeing that 
he remained unnoticed, he had been unable to struggle against his 
sleepiness.  His grandmother turned toward the table to slap his 
frail little hands, whitening in the lamplight, when Laguitte 
stopped her.

"No--no!" he said.  "Let the poor little man sleep.  I haven't got 
anything funny to say.  There's no need for him to hear me."

The old lady sat down in her armchair; deep silence reigned, and 
they looked at one another.

"Well, yes," said the major at last, punctuating his words with an 
angry motion of his chin, "he has been and done it; that hound Burle 
has been and done it!"

Not a muscle of Mme Burle's face moved, but she became livid, and 
her figure stiffened.  Then the major continued: "I had my doubts.  
I had intended mentioning the subject to you.  Burle was spending 
too much money, and he had an idiotic look which I did not fancy.  
Thunder and lightning!  What a fool a man must be to behave so 
filthily!"

Then he thumped his knee furiously with his clenched fist and seemed 
to choke with indignation.  The old woman put the straightforward 
question:

"He has stolen?"

"You can't have an idea of it.  You see, I never examined his 
accounts; I approved and signed them.  You know how those things are 
managed.  However, just before the inspection--as the colonel is a 
crotchety old maniac--I said to Burle: 'I say, old man, look to your 
accounts; I am answerable, you know,' and then I felt perfectly 
secure.  Well, about a month ago, as he seemed queer and some nasty 
stories were circulating, I peered a little closer into the books 
and pottered over the entries.  I thought everything looked straight 
and very well kept--"

At this point he stopped, convulsed by such a fit of rage that he 
had to relieve himself by a volley of appalling oaths.  Finally he 
resumed: "It isn't the swindle that angers me; it is his disgusting 
behavior to me.  He has gammoned me, Madame Burle.  By God!  Does he 
take me for an old fool?"

"So he stole?" the mother again questioned.

"This evening," continued the major more quietly, "I had just 
finished my dinner when Gagneux came in--you know Gagneux, the 
butcher at the corner of the Place aux Herbes?  Another dirty beast 
who got the meat contract and makes our men eat all the diseased cow 
flesh in the neighborhood!  Well, I received him like a dog, and 
then he let it all out--blurted out the whole thing, and a pretty 
mess it is!  It appears that Burle only paid him in driblets and had 
got himself into a muddle--a confusion of figures which the devil 
himself couldn't disentangle.  In short, Burle owes the butcher two 
thousand francs, and Gagneux threatens that he'll inform the colonel 
if he is not paid.  To make matters worse, Burle, just to blind me, 
handed me every week a forged receipt which he had squarely signed 
with Gagneux's name.  To think he did that to me, his old friend!  
Ah, curse him!"

With increasing profanity the major rose to his feet, shook his fist 
at the ceiling and then fell back in his chair.  Mme Burle again 
repeated: "He has stolen.  It was inevitable."

Then without a word of judgment or condemnation she added simply: 
"Two thousand francs--we have not got them.  There are barely thirty 
francs in the house."

"I expected as much," said Laguitte.  "And do you know where all the 
money goes?  Why, Melanie gets it--yes, Melanie, a creature who has 
turned Burle into a perfect fool.  Ah, those women!  Those fiendish 
women!  I always said they would do for him!  I cannot conceive what 
he is made of!  He is only five years younger than I am, and yet he 
is as mad as ever.  What a woman hunter he is!"

Another long silence followed.  Outside the rain was increasing in 
violence, and throughout the sleepy little town one could hear the 
crashing of slates and chimney pots as they were dashed by the blast 
onto the pavements of the streets.

"Come," suddenly said the major, rising, "my stopping here won't 
mend matters.  I have warned you--and now I'm off."

"What is to be done?  To whom can we apply?" muttered the old woman 
drearily.

"Don't give way--we must consider.  If I only had the two thousand 
francs--but you know that I am not rich."

The major stopped short in confusion.  This old bachelor, wifeless 
and childless, spent his pay in drink and gambled away at ecarte 
whatever money his cognac and absinthe left in his pocket.  Despite 
that, however, he was scrupulously honest from a sense of 
discipline.

"Never mind," he added as he reached the threshold.  "I'll begin by 
stirring him up.  I shall move heaven and earth!  What!  Burle, 
Colonel Burle's son, condemned for theft!  That cannot be!  I would 
sooner burn down the town.  Now, thunder and lightning, don't worry; 
it is far more annoying for me than for you."

He shook the old lady's hand roughly and vanished into the shadows 
of the staircase, while she held the lamp aloft to light the way.  
When she returned and replaced the lamp on the table she stood for a 
moment motionless in front of Charles, who was still asleep with his 
face lying on the dictionary.  His pale cheeks and long fair hair 
made him look like a girl, and she gazed at him dreamily, a shade of 
tenderness passing over her harsh countenance.  But it was only a 
passing emotion; her features regained their look of cold, obstinate 
determination, and, giving the youngster a sharp rap on his little 
hand, she said:

"Charles--your lessons."

The boy awoke, dazed and shivering, and again rapidly turned over 
the leaves.  At the same moment Major Laguitte, slamming the house 
door behind him, received on his head a quantity of water falling 
from the gutters above, whereupon he began to swear in so loud a 
voice that he could be heard above the storm.  And after that no 
sound broke upon the pelting downpour save the slight rustle of the 
boy's pen traveling over the paper.  Mme Burle had resumed her seat 
near the chimney piece, still rigid, with her eyes fixed on the dead 
embers, preserving, indeed, her habitual attitude and absorbed in 
her one idea.



CHAPTER II

THE CAFE


The Cafe de Paris, kept by Melanie Cartier, a widow, was situated on 
the Place du Palais, a large irregular square planted with meager, 
dusty elm trees.  The place was so well known in Vauchamp that it 
was customary to say, "Are you coming to Melanie's?"  At the farther 
end of the first room, which was a spacious one, there was another 
called "the divan," a narrow apartment having sham leather benches 
placed against the walls, while at each corner there stood a marble-
topped table.  The widow, deserting her seat in the front room, 
where she left her little servant Phrosine, spent her evenings in 
the inner apartment, ministering to a few customers, the usual 
frequenters of the place, those who were currently styled "the 
gentlemen of the divan."  When a man belonged to that set it was as 
if he had a label on his back; he was spoken of with smiles of 
mingled contempt and envy.

Mme Cartier had become a widow when she was five and twenty.  Her 
husband, a wheelwright, who on the death of an uncle had amazed 
Vauchamp by taking the Cafe de Paris, had one fine day brought her 
back with him from Montpellier, where he was wont to repair twice a 
year to purchase liqueurs.  As he was stocking his establishment he 
selected, together with divers beverages, a woman of the sort he 
wanted--of an engaging aspect and apt to stimulate the trade of the 
house.  It was never known where he had picked her up, but he 
married her after trying her in the cafe during six months or so.  
Opinions were divided in Vauchamp as to her merits, some folks 
declaring that she was superb, while others asserted that she looked 
like a drum-major.  She was a tall woman with large features and 
coarse hair falling low over her forehead.  However, everyone agreed 
that she knew very well how to fool the sterner sex.  She had fine 
eyes and was wont to fix them with a bold stare on the gentlemen of 
the divan, who colored and became like wax in her hands.  She also 
had the reputation of possessing a wonderfully fine figure, and 
southerners appreciate a statuesque style of beauty.

Cartier had died in a singular way.  Rumor hinted at a conjugal 
quarrel, a kick, producing some internal tumor.  Whatever may have 
been the truth, Melanie found herself encumbered with the cafe, 
which was far from doing a prosperous business.  Her husband had 
wasted his uncle's inheritance in drinking his own absinthe and 
wearing out the cloth of his own billiard table.  For a while it was 
believed that the widow would have to sell out, but she liked the 
life and the establishment just as it was.  If she could secure a 
few customers the bigger room might remain deserted.  So she limited 
herself to repapering the divan in white and gold and recovering the 
benches.  She began by entertaining a chemist.  Then a vermicelli 
maker, a lawyer and a retired magistrate put in an appearance; and 
thus it was that the cafe remained open, although the waiter did not 
receive twenty orders a day.  No objections were raised by the 
authorities, as appearances were kept up; and, indeed, it was not 
deemed advisable to interfere, for some respectable folks might have 
been worried.

Of an evening five or six well-to-do citizens would enter the front 
room and play at dominoes there.  Although Cartier was dead and the 
Cafe de Paris had got a queer name, they saw nothing and kept up 
their old habits.  In course of time, the waiter having nothing to 
do, Melanie dismissed him and made Phrosine light the solitary gas 
burner in the corner where the domino players congregated.  
Occasionally a party of young men, attracted by the gossip that 
circulated through the town, would come in, wildly excited and 
laughing loudly and awkwardly.  But they were received there with 
icy dignity.  As a rule they did not even see the widow, and even if 
she happened to be present she treated them with withering disdain, 
so that they withdrew, stammering and confused.  Melanie was too 
astute to indulge in any compromising whims.  While the front room 
remained obscure, save in the corner where the few townsfolk rattled 
their dominoes, she personally waited on the gentlemen of the divan, 
showing herself amiable without being free, merely venturing in 
moments of familiarity to lean on the shoulder of one or another of 
them, the better to watch a skillfully played game of ecarte.

One evening the gentlemen of the divan, who had ended by tolerating 
each other's presence, experienced a disagreeable surprise on 
finding Captain Burle at home there.  He had casually entered the 
cafe that same morning to get a glass of vermouth, so it seemed, and 
he had found Melanie there.  They had conversed, and in the evening 
when he returned Phrosine immediately showed him to the inner room.

Two days later Burle reigned there supreme; still he had not 
frightened the chemist, the vermicelli maker, the lawyer or the 
retired magistrate away.  The captain, who was short and dumpy, 
worshiped tall, plump women.  In his regiment he had been nicknamed 
"Petticoat Burle" on account of his constant philandering.  Whenever 
the officers, and even the privates, met some monstrous-looking 
creature, some giantess puffed out with fat, whether she were in 
velvet or in rags, they would invariably exclaim, "There goes one to 
Petticoat Burle's taste!"  Thus Melanie, with her opulent presence, 
quite conquered him.  He was lost--quite wrecked.  In less than a 
fortnight he had fallen to vacuous imbecility.  With much the 
expression of a whipped hound in the tiny sunken eyes which lighted 
up his bloated face, he was incessantly watching the widow in mute 
adoration before her masculine features and stubby hair.  For fear 
that he might be dismissed, he put up with the presence of the other 
gentlemen of the divan and spent his pay in the place down to the 
last copper.  A sergeant reviewed the situation in one sentence: 
"Petticoat Burle is done for; he's a buried man!"

It was nearly ten o'clock when Major Laguitte furiously flung the 
door of the cafe open.  For a moment those inside could see the 
deluged square transformed into a dark sea of liquid mud, bubbling 
under the terrible downpour.  The major, now soaked to the skin and 
leaving a stream behind him, strode up to the small counter where 
Phrosine was reading a novel.

"You little wretch," he yelled, "you have dared to gammon an 
officer; you deserve--"

And then he lifted his hand as if to deal a blow such as would have 
felled an ox.  The little maid shrank back, terrified, while the 
amazed domino players looked, openmouthed.  However, the major did 
not linger there--he pushed the divan door open and appeared before 
Melanie and Burle just as the widow was playfully making the captain 
sip his grog in small spoonfuls, as if she were feeding a pet 
canary.  Only the ex-magistrate and the chemist had come that 
evening, and they had retired early in a melancholy frame of mind.  
Then Melanie, being in want of three hundred francs for the morrow, 
had taken advantage of the opportunity to cajole the captain.

"Come." she said, "open your mouth; ain't it nice, you greedy piggy-
wiggy?"

Burle, flushing scarlet, with glazed eyes and sunken figure, was 
sucking the spoon with an air of intense enjoyment.

"Good heavens!" roared the major from the threshold.  "You now play 
tricks on me, do you?  I'm sent to the roundabout and told that you 
never came here, and yet all the while here you are, addling your 
silly brains."

Burle shuddered, pushing the grog away, while Melanie stepped 
angrily in front of him as if to shield him with her portly figure, 
but Laguitte looked at her with that quiet, resolute expression well 
known to women who are familiar with bodily chastisement.

"Leave us," he said curtly.

She hesitated for the space of a second.  She almost felt the gust 
of the expected blow, and then, white with rage, she joined Phrosine 
in the outer room.

When the two men were alone Major Laguitte walked up to Burle, 
looked at him and, slightly stooping, yelled into his face these two 
words: "You pig!"

The captain, quite dazed, endeavored to retort, but he had not time 
to do so.

"Silence!" resumed the major.  "You have bamboozled a friend.  You 
palmed off on me a lot of forged receipts which might have sent both 
of us to the gallows.  Do you call that proper behavior?  Is that 
the sort of trick to play a friend of thirty years' standing?"

Burle, who had fallen back in his chair, was livid; his limbs shook 
as if with ague.  Meanwhile the major, striding up and down and 
striking the tables wildly with his fists, continued: "So you have 
become a thief like the veriest scribbling cur of a clerk, and all 
for the sake of that creature here!  If at least you had stolen for 
your mother's sake it would have been honorable!  But, curse it, to 
play tricks and bring the money into this shanty is what I cannot 
understand!  Tell me--what are you made of at your age to go to the 
dogs as you are going all for the sake of a creature like a 
grenadier!"

"YOU gamble--" stammered the captain.

"Yes, I do--curse it!" thundered the major, lashed into still 
greater fury by this remark.  "And I am a pitiful rogue to do so, 
because it swallows up all my pay and doesn't redound to the honor 
of the French army.  However, I don't steal.  Kill yourself, if it 
pleases you; starve your mother and the boy, but respect the 
regimental cashbox and don't drag your friends down with you."

He stopped.  Burle was sitting there with fixed eyes and a stupid 
air.  Nothing was heard for a moment save the clatter of the major's 
heels.

"And not a single copper," he continued aggressively.  "Can you 
picture yourself between two gendarmes, eh?"

He then grew a little calmer, caught hold of Burle's wrists and 
forced him to rise.

"Come!" he said gruffly.  "Something must be done at once, for I 
cannot go to bed with this affair on my mind--I have an idea."

In the front room Melanie and Phrosine were talking eagerly in low 
voices.  When the widow saw the two men leaving the divan she moved 
toward Burle and said coaxingly: "What, are you going already, 
Captain?"

"Yes, he's going," brutally answered Laguitte, "and I don't intend 
to let him set foot here again."

The little maid felt frightened and pulled her mistress back by the 
skirt of her dress; in doing so she imprudently murmured the word 
"drunkard" and thereby brought down the slap which the major's hand 
had been itching to deal for some time past.  Both women having 
stooped, however, the blow only fell on Phrosine's back hair, 
flattening her cap and breaking her comb.  The domino players were 
indignant.

"Let's cut it," shouted Laguitte, and he pushed Burle on the 
pavement.  "If I remained I should smash everyone in the place."

To cross the square they had to wade up to their ankles in mud.  The 
rain, driven by the wind, poured off their faces.  The captain 
walked on in silence, while the major kept on reproaching him with 
his cowardice and its disastrous consequences.  Wasn't it sweet 
weather for tramping the streets?  If he hadn't been such an idiot 
they would both be warmly tucked in bed instead of paddling about in 
the mud.  Then he spoke of Gagneux--a scoundrel whose diseased meat 
had on three separate occasions made the whole regiment ill.  In a 
week, however, the contract would come to an end, and the fiend 
himself would not get it renewed.

"It rests with me," the major grumbled.  "I can select whomsoever I 
choose, and I'd rather cut off my right arm than put that poisoner 
in the way of earning another copper."

Just then he slipped into a gutter and, half choked by a string of 
oaths, he gasped:

"You understand--I am going to rout up Gagneux.  You must stop 
outside while I go in.  I must know what the rascal is up to and if 
he'll dare to carry out his threat of informing the colonel 
tomorrow.  A butcher--curse him!  The idea of compromising oneself 
with a butcher!  Ah, you aren't over-proud, and I shall never 
forgive you for all this."

They had now reached the Place aux Herbes.  Gagneux's house was 
quite dark, but Laguitte knocked so loudly that he was eventually 
admitted.  Burle remained alone in the dense obscurity and did not 
even attempt to seek any shelter.  He stood at a corner of the 
market under the pelting rain, his head filled with a loud buzzing 
noise which prevented him from thinking.  He did not feel impatient, 
for he was unconscious of the flight of time.  He stood there 
looking at the house, which, with its closed door and windows, 
seemed quite lifeless.  When at the end of an hour the major came 
out again it appeared to the captain as if he had only just gone in.

Laguitte was so grimly mute that Burle did not venture to question 
him.  For a moment they sought each other, groping about in the 
dark; then they resumed their walk through the somber streets, where 
the water rolled as in the bed of a torrent.  They moved on in 
silence side by side, the major being so abstracted that he even 
forgot to swear.  However, as they again crossed the Place du 
Palais, at the sight of the Cafe de Paris, which was still lit up, 
he dropped his hand on Burle's shoulder and said, "If you ever re-
enter that hole I--"

"No fear!" answered the captain without letting his friend finish 
his sentence.

Then he stretched out his hand.

"No, no," said Laguitte, "I'll see you home; I'll at least make sure 
that you'll sleep in your bed tonight."

They went on, and as they ascended the Rue des Recollets they 
slackened their pace.  When the captain's door was reached and Burle 
had taken out his latchkey he ventured to ask:

"Well?"

"Well," answered the major gruffly, "I am as dirty a rogue as you 
are.  Yes!  I have done a scurrilous thing.  The fiend take you!  
Our soldiers will eat carrion for three months longer."

Then he explained that Gagneux, the disgusting Gagneux, had a 
horribly level head and that he had persuaded him--the major--to 
strike a bargain.  He would refrain from informing the colonel, and 
he would even make a present of the two thousand francs and replace 
the forged receipts by genuine ones, on condition that the major 
bound himself to renew the meat contract.  It was a settled thing.

"Ah," continued Laguitte, "calculate what profits the brute must 
make out of the meat to part with such a sum as two thousand 
francs."

Burle, choking with emotion, grasped his old friend's hands, 
stammering confused words of thanks.  The vileness of the action 
committed for his sake brought tears into his eyes.

"I never did such a thing before," growled Laguitte, "but I was 
driven to it.  Curse it, to think that I haven't those two thousand 
francs in my drawer!  It is enough to make one hate cards.  It is my 
own fault.  I am not worth much; only, mark my words, don't begin 
again, for, curse it--I shan't."

The captain embraced him, and when he had entered the house the 
major stood a moment before the closed door to make certain that he 
had gone upstairs to bed.  Then as midnight was striking and the 
rain was still belaboring the dark town, he slowly turned homeward.  
The thought of his men almost broke his heart, and, stopping short, 
he said aloud in a voice full of compassion:

"Poor devils! what a lot of cow beef they'll have to swallow for 
those two thousand francs!"



CHAPTER III

AGAIN?


The regiment was altogether nonplused: Petticoat Burle had quarreled 
with Melanie.  When a week had elapsed it became a proved and 
undeniable fact; the captain no longer set foot inside the Cafe de 
Paris, where the chemist, it was averred, once more reigned in his 
stead, to the profound sorrow of the retired magistrate.  An even 
more incredible statement was that Captain Burle led the life of a 
recluse in the Rue des Recollets.  He was becoming a reformed 
character; he spent his evenings at his own fireside, hearing little 
Charles repeat his lessons.  His mother, who had never breathed a 
word to him of his manipulations with Gagneux, maintained her old 
severity of demeanor as she sat opposite to him in her armchair, but 
her looks seemed to imply that she believed him reclaimed.

A fortnight later Major Laguitte came one evening to invite himself 
to dinner.  He felt some awkwardness at the prospect of meeting 
Burle again, not on his own account but because he dreaded awakening 
painful memories.  However, as the captain was mending his ways he 
wished to shake hands and break a crust with him.  He thought this 
would please his old friend.

When Laguitte arrived Burle was in his room, so it was the old lady 
who received the major.  The latter, after announcing that he had 
come to have a plate of soup with them, added, lowering his voice:

"Well, how goes it?"

"It is all right," answered the old lady.

"Nothing queer?"

"Absolutely nothing.  Never away--in bed at nine--and looking quite 
happy."

"Ah, confound it," replied the major, "I knew very well he only 
wanted a shaking.  He has some heart left, the dog!"

When Burle appeared he almost crushed the major's hands in his 
grasp, and standing before the fire, waiting for the dinner, they 
conversed peacefully, honestly, together, extolling the charms of 
home life.  The captain vowed he wouldn't exchange his home for a 
kingdom and declared that when he had removed his braces, put on his 
slippers and settled himself in his armchair, no king was fit to 
hold a candle to him.  The major assented and examined him.  At all 
events his virtuous conduct had not made him any thinner; he still 
looked bloated; his eyes were bleared, and his mouth was heavy.  He 
seemed to be half asleep as he repeated mechanically: "Home life!  
There's nothing like home life, nothing in the world!"

"No doubt," said the major; "still, one mustn't exaggerate--take a 
little exercise and come to the cafe now and then."

"To the cafe, why?" asked Burle.  "Do I lack anything here?  No, no, 
I remain at home."

When Charles had laid his books aside Laguitte was surprised to see 
a maid come in to lay the cloth.

"So you keep a servant now," he remarked to Mme Burle.

"I had to get one," she answered with a sigh.  "My legs are not what 
they used to be, and the household was going to rack and ruin.  
Fortunately Cabrol let me have his daughter.  You know old Cabrol, 
who sweeps the market?  He did not know what to do with Rose--I am 
teaching her how to work."

Just then the girl left the room.

"How old is she?" asked the major.

"Barely seventeen.  She is stupid and dirty, but I only give her ten 
francs a month, and she eats nothing but soup."

When Rose returned with an armful of plates Laguitte, though he did 
not care about women, began to scrutinize her and was amazed at 
seeing so ugly a creature.  She was very short, very dark and 
slightly deformed, with a face like an ape's: a flat nose, a huge 
mouth and narrow greenish eyes.  Her broad back and long arms gave 
her an appearance of great strength.

"What a snout!" said Laguitte, laughing, when the maid had again 
left the room to fetch the cruets.

"Never mind," said Burle carelessly, "she is very obliging and does 
all one asks her.  She suits us well enough as a scullion."

The dinner was very pleasant.  It consisted of boiled beef and 
mutton hash.  Charles was encouraged to relate some stories of his 
school, and Mme Burle repeatedly asked him the same question: "Don't 
you want to be a soldier?"  A faint smile hovered over the child's 
wan lips as he answered with the frightened obedience of a trained 
dog, "Oh yes, Grandmother."  Captain Burle, with his elbows on the 
table, was masticating slowly with an absent-minded expression.  The 
big room was getting warmer; the single lamp placed on the table 
left the corners in vague gloom.  There was a certain amount of 
heavy comfort, the familiar intimacy of penurious people who do not 
change their plates at every course but become joyously excited at 
the unexpected appearance of a bowl of whipped egg cream at the 
close of the meal.

Rose, whose heavy tread shook the floor as she paced round the 
table, had not yet opened her mouth.  At last she stopped behind the 
captain's chair and asked in a gruff voice: "Cheese, sir?"

Burle started.  "What, eh?  Oh yes--cheese.  Hold the plate tight."

He cut a piece of Gruyere, the girl watching him the while with her 
narrow eyes.  Laguitte laughed; Rose's unparalleled ugliness amused 
him immensely.  He whispered in the captain's ear, "She is ripping!  
There never was such a nose and such a mouth!  You ought to send her 
to the colonel's someday as a curiosity.  It would amuse him to see 
her."

More and more struck by this phenomenal ugliness, the major felt a 
paternal desire to examine the girl more closely.

"Come here," he said, "I want some cheese too."

She brought the plate, and Laguitte, sticking the knife in the 
Gruyere, stared at her, grinning the while because he discovered 
that she had one nostril broader than the other.  Rose gravely 
allowed herself to be looked at, waiting till the gentleman had done 
laughing.

She removed the cloth and disappeared.  Burle immediately went to 
sleep in the chimney corner while the major and Mme Burle began to 
chat.  Charles had returned to his exercises.  Quietude fell from 
the loft ceiling; the quietude of a middle-class household gathered 
in concord around their fireside.  At nine o'clock Burle woke up, 
yawned and announced that he was going off to bed; he apologized but 
declared that he could not keep his eyes open.  Half an hour later, 
when the major took his leave, Mme Burle vainly called for Rose to 
light him downstairs; the girl must have gone up to her room; she 
was, indeed, a regular hen, snoring the round of the clock without 
waking.

"No need to disturb anybody," said Laguitte on the landing; "my legs 
are not much better than yours, but if I get hold of the banisters I 
shan't break any bones.  Now, my dear lady, I leave you happy; your 
troubles are ended at last.  I watched Burle closely, and I'll take 
my oath that he's guileless as a child.  Dash it--after all, it was 
high time for Petticoat Burle to reform; he was going downhill 
fast."

The major went away fully satisfied with the house and its inmates; 
the walls were of glass and could harbor no equivocal conduct.  What 
particularly delighted him in his friend's return to virtue was that 
it absolved him from the obligation of verifying the accounts.  
Nothing was more distasteful to him than the inspection of a number 
of ledgers, and as long as Burle kept steady, he--Laguitte--could 
smoke his pipe in peace and sign the books in all confidence.  
However, he continued to keep one eye open for a little while longer 
and found the receipts genuine, the entries correct, the columns 
admirably balanced.  A month later he contented himself with 
glancing at the receipts and running his eye over the totals.  Then 
one morning, without the slightest suspicion of there being anything 
wrong, simply because he had lit a second pipe and had nothing to 
do, he carelessly added up a row of figures and fancied that he 
detected an error of thirteen francs.  The balance seemed perfectly 
correct, and yet he was not mistaken; the total outlay was thirteen 
francs more than the various sums for which receipts were furnished.  
It looked queer, but he said nothing to Burle, just making up his 
mind to examine the next accounts closely.  On the following week he 
detected a fresh error of nineteen francs, and then, suddenly 
becoming alarmed, he shut himself up with the books and spent a 
wretched morning poring over them, perspiring, swearing and feeling 
as if his very skull were bursting with the figures.  At every page 
he discovered thefts of a few francs--the most miserable petty 
thefts--ten, eight, eleven francs, latterly, three and four; and, 
indeed, there was one column showing that Burle had pilfered just 
one franc and a half.  For two months, however, he had been steadily 
robbing the cashbox, and by comparing dates the major found to his 
disgust that the famous lesson respecting Gagneux had only kept him 
straight for one week!  This last discovery infuriated Laguitte, who 
struck the books with his clenched fists, yelling through a shower 
of oaths:

"This is more abominable still!  At least there was some pluck about 
those forged receipts of Gagneux.  But this time he is as 
contemptible as a cook charging twopence extra for her cabbages.  
Powers of hell!  To pilfer a franc and a half and clap it in his 
pocket!  Hasn't the brute got any pride then?  Couldn't he run away 
with the safe or play the fool with actresses?"

The pitiful meanness of these pilferings revolted the major, and, 
moreover, he was enraged at having been duped a second time, 
deceived by the simple, stupid dodge of falsified additions.  He 
rose at last and paced his office for a whole hour, growling aloud.

"This gives me his measure.  Even if I were to thresh him to a jelly 
every morning he would still drop a couple of coins into his pocket 
every afternoon.  But where can he spend it all?  He is never seen 
abroad; he goes to bed at nine, and everything looks so clean and 
proper over there.  Can the brute have vices that nobody knows of?"

He returned to the desk, added up the subtracted money and found a 
total of five hundred and forty-five francs.  Where was this 
deficiency to come from?  The inspection was close at hand, and if 
the crotchety colonel should take it into his head to examine a 
single page, the murder would be out and Burle would be done for.

This idea froze the major, who left off cursing, picturing Mme Burle 
erect and despairing, and at the same time he felt his heart swell 
with personal grief and shame.

"Well," he muttered, "I must first of all look into the rogue's 
business; I will act afterward."

As he walked over to Burle's office he caught sight of a skirt 
vanishing through the doorway.  Fancying that he had a clue to the 
mystery, he slipped up quietly and listened and speedily recognized 
Melanie's shrill voice.  She was complaining of the gentlemen of the 
divan.  She had signed a promissory note which she was unable to 
meet; the bailiffs were in the house, and all her goods would be 
sold.  The captain, however, barely replied to her.  He alleged that 
he had no money, whereupon she burst into tears and began to coax 
him.  But her blandishments were apparently ineffectual, for Burle's 
husky voice could be heard repeating, "Impossible!  Impossible!"  
And finally the widow withdrew in a towering passion.  The major, 
amazed at the turn affairs were taking, waited a few moments longer 
before entering the office, where Burle had remained alone.  He 
found him very calm, and despite his furious inclination to call him 
names he also remained calm, determined to begin by finding out the 
exact truth.

The office certainly did not look like a swindler's den.  A cane-
seated chair, covered with an honest leather cushion, stood before 
the captain's desk, and in a corner there was the locked safe.  
Summer was coming on, and the song of a canary sounded through the 
open window.  The apartment was very neat and tidy, redolent of old 
papers, and altogether its appearance inspired one with confidence.

"Wasn't it Melanie who was leaving here as I came along?" asked 
Laguitte.

Burle shrugged his shoulders.

"Yes," he mumbled.  "She has been dunning me for two hundred francs, 
but she can't screw ten out of me--not even tenpence."

"Indeed!" said the major, just to try him.  "I heard that you had 
made up with her."

"I?  Certainly not.  I have done with the likes of her for good."

Laguitte went away, feeling greatly perplexed.  Where had the five 
hundred and forty-five francs gone?  Had the idiot taken to drinking 
or gambling?  He decided to pay Burle a surprise visit that very 
evening at his own house, and maybe by questioning his mother he 
might learn something.  However, during the afternoon his leg became 
very painful; latterly he had been feeling in ill-health, and he had 
to use a stick so as not to limp too outrageously.  This stick 
grieved him sorely, and he declared with angry despair that he was 
now no better than a pensioner.  However, toward the evening, making 
a strong effort, he pulled himself out of his armchair and, leaning 
heavily on his stick, dragged himself through the darkness to the 
Rue des Recollets, which he reached about nine o'clock.  The street 
door was still unlocked, and on going up he stood panting on the 
third landing, when he heard voices on the upper floor.  One of 
these voices was Burle's, so he fancied, and out of curiosity he 
ascended another flight of stairs.  Then at the end of a passage on 
the left he saw a ray of light coming from a door which stood ajar.  
As the creaking of his boots resounded, this door was sharply 
closed, and he found himself in the dark.

"Some cook going to bed!" he muttered angrily.  "I'm a fool."

All the same he groped his way as gently as possible to the door and 
listened.  Two people were talking in the room, and he stood aghast, 
for it was Burle and that fright Rose!  Then he listened, and the 
conversation he heard left him no doubt of the awful truth.  For a 
moment he lifted his stick as if to beat down the door.  Then he 
shuddered and, staggering back, leaned against the wall.  His legs 
were trembling under him, while in the darkness of the staircase he 
brandished his stick as if it had been a saber.

What was to be done?  After his first moment of passion there had 
come thoughts of the poor old lady below.  And these made him 
hesitate.  It was all over with the captain now; when a man sank as 
low as that he was hardly worth the few shovelfuls of earth that are 
thrown over carrion to prevent them from polluting the atmosphere.  
Whatever might be said of Burle, however much one might try to shame 
him, he would assuredly begin the next day.  Ah, heavens, to think 
of it!  The money!  The honor of the army!  The name of Burle, that 
respected name, dragged through the mire!  By all that was holy this 
could and should not be!

Presently the major softened.  If he had only possessed five hundred 
and forty-five francs!  But he had not got such an amount.  On the 
previous day he had drunk too much cognac, just like a mere sub, and 
had lost shockingly at cards.  It served him right--he ought to have 
known better!  And if he was so lame he richly deserved it too; by 
rights, in fact, his leg ought to be much worse.

At last he crept downstairs and rang at the bell of Mme Burle's 
flat.  Five minutes elapsed, and then the old lady appeared.

"I beg your pardon for keeping you waiting," she said; "I thought 
that dormouse Rose was still about.  I must go and shake her."

But the major detained her.

"Where is Burle?" he asked.

"Oh, he has been snoring since nine o'clock.  Would you like to 
knock at his door?"

"No, no, I only wanted to have a chat with you."

In the parlor Charles sat at his usual place, having just finished 
his exercises.  He looked terrified, and his poor little white hands 
were tremulous.  In point of fact, his grandmother, before sending 
him to bed, was wont to read some martial stories aloud so as to 
develop the latent family heroism in his bosom.  That night she had 
selected the episode of the Vengeur, the man-of-war freighted with 
dying heroes and sinking into the sea.  The child, while listening, 
had become almost hysterical, and his head was racked as with some 
ghastly nightmare.

Mme Burle asked the major to let her finish the perusal.  "Long live 
the republic!"  She solemniy closed the volune.  Charles was as 
white as a sheet.

"You see," said the old lady, "the duty of every French soldier is 
to die for his country."

"Yes, Grandmother."

Then the lad kissed her on the forehead and, shivering with fear, 
went to bed in his big room, where the faintest creak of the 
paneling threw him into a cold sweat.

The major had listened with a grave face.  Yes, by heavens!  Honor 
was honor, and he would never permit that wretched Burle to disgrace 
the old woman and the boy!  As the lad was so devoted to the 
military profession, it was necessary that he should be able to 
enter Saint-Cyr with his head erect.

When Mme Burle took up the lamp to show the major out, she passed 
the door of the captain's room, and stopped short, surprised to see 
the key outside, which was a most unusual occurrence.

"Do go in," she said to Laguitte; "it is bad for him to sleep so 
much."

And before he could interpose she had opened the door and stood 
transfixed on finding the room empty.  Laguitte turned crimson and 
looked so foolish that she suddenly understood everything, 
enlightened by the sudden recollection of several little incidents 
to which she had previously attached no importance.

"You knew it--you knew it!" she stanmered.  "Why was I not told?  
Oh, my God, to think of it!  Ah, he has been stealing again--I feel 
it!"

She remained erect, white and rigid.  Then she added in a harsh 
voice:


"Look you--I wish he were dead!"

Laguitte caught hold of both her hands, which for a moment he kept 
tightly clasped in his own.  Then he left her hurriedly, for he felt 
a lump rising in his throat and tears coming to his eyes.  Ah, by 
all the powers, this time his mind was quite made up.



CHAPTER IV

INSPECTION


The regimental inspection was to take place at the end of the month.  
The major had ten days before him.  On the very next morning, 
however, he crawled, limping, as far as the Cafe de Paris, where he 
ordered some beer.  Melanie grew pale when she saw him enter, and it 
was with a lively recollection of a certain slap that Phrosine 
hastened to serve him.  The major seemed very calm, however; he 
called for a second chair to rest his bad leg upon and drank his 
beer quietly like any other thirsty man.  He had sat there for about 
an hour when he saw two officers crossing the Place du Palais--
Morandot, who commanded one of the battalions of the regiment, and 
Captain Doucet.  Thereupon he excitedly waved his cane and shouted: 
"Come in and have a glass of beer with me!"

The officers dared not refuse, but when the maid had brought the 
beer Morandot said to the major: "So you patronize this place now?"

"Yes--the beer is good."

Captain Doucet winked and asked archly: "Do you belong to the divan, 
Major?"

Laguitte chuckled but did not answer.  Then the others began to 
chaff him about Melanie, and he took their remarks good-naturedly, 
simply shrugging his shoulders.  The widow was undoubtedly a fine 
woman, however much people might talk.  Some of those who disparaged 
her would, in reality, be only too pleased to win her good graces.  
Then turning to the little counter and assuming an engaging air, he 
shouted:

"Three more glasses, madame."

Melanie was so taken aback that she rose and brought the beer 
herself.  The major detained her at the table and forgot himself so 
far as to softly pat the hand which she had carelessly placed on the 
back of a chair.  Used as she was to alternate brutality and 
flattery, she immediately became confident, believing in a sudden 
whim of gallantry on the part of the "old wreck," as she was wont to 
style the major when talking with Phrosine.  Doucet and Morandot 
looked at each other in surprise.  Was the major actually stepping 
into Petticoat Burle's shoes?  The regiment would be convulsed if 
that were the case.

Suddenly, however, Laguitte, who kept his eye on the square, gave a 
start.

"Hallo, there's Burle!" he exclaimed.

"Yes, it is his time," explained Phrosine.  "The captain passes 
every afternoon on his way from the office."

In spite of his lameness the major had risen to his feet, pushing 
aside the chairs as he called out: "Burle!  I say--come along and 
have a glass."

The captain, quite aghast and unable to understand why Laguitte was 
at the widow's, advanced mechanically.  He was so perplexed that he 
again hesitated at the door.

"Another glass of beer," ordered the major, and then turning to 
Burle, he added, "What's the matter with you?  Come in.  Are you 
afraid of being eaten alive?"

The captain took a seat, and an awkward pause followed.  Melanie, 
who brought the beer with trembling hands, dreaded some scene which 
might result in the closing of her establishment.  The major's 
gallantry made her uneasy, and she endeavored to slip away, but he 
invited her to drink with them, and before she could refuse he had 
ordered Phrosine to bring a liqueur glass of anisette, doing so with 
as much coolness as if he had been master of the house.  Melanie was 
thus compelled to sit down between the captain and Laguitte, who 
exclaimed aggressively: "I WILL have ladies respected.  We are 
French officers!  Let us drink Madame's health!"

Burle, with his eyes fixed on his glass, smiled in an embarrassed 
way.  The two officers, shocked at the proceedings, had already 
tried to get off.  Fortunately the cafe was deserted, save that the 
domino players were having their afternoon game.  At every fresh 
oath which came from the major they glanced around, scandalized by 
such an unusual accession of customers and ready to threaten Melanie 
that they would leave her for the Cafe de la Gare if the soldiery 
was going to invade her place like flies that buzzed about, 
attracted by the stickiness of the tables which Phrosine scoured 
only on Saturdays.  She was now reclining behind the counter, 
already reading a novel again.

"How's this--you are not drinking with Madame?" roughly said the 
major to Burle.  "Be civil at least!"

Then as Doucet and Morandot were again preparing to leave, he 
stopped them.

"Why can't you wait?  We'll go together.  It is only this brute who 
never knows how to behave himself."

The two officers looked surprised at the major's sudden bad temper.  
Melanie attempted to restore peace and with a light laugh placed her 
hands on the arms of both men.  However, Laguitte disengaged 
himself.

"No," he roared, "leave me alone.  Why does he refuse to chink 
glasses with you?  I shall not allow you to be insulted--do you 
hear?  1 am quite sick of him."

Burle, paling under the insult, turned slightly and said to 
Morandot, "What does this mean?  He calls me in here to insult me.  
Is he drunk?"

With a wild oath the major rose on his trembling legs and struck the 
captain's cheek with his open hand.  Melanie dived and thus escaped 
one half of the smack.  An appalling uproar ensued.  Phrosine 
screamed behind the counter as if she herself had received the blow; 
the domino players also entrenched themselves behind their table in 
fear lest the soldiers should draw their swords and massacre them.  
However, Doucet and Morandot pinioned the captain to prevent him 
from springing at the major's throat and forcibly let him to the 
door.  When they got him outside they succeeded in quieting him a 
little by repeating that Laguitte was quite in the wrong.  They 
would lay the affair before the colonel, having witnessed it, and 
the colonel would give his decision.  As soon as they had got Burle 
away they returned to the cafe where they found Laguitte in reality 
greatly disturbed, with tears in his eyes but affecting stolid 
indifference and slowly finishing his beer.

"Listen, Major," began Morandot, "that was very wrong on your part.  
The captain is your inferior in rank, and you know that he won't be 
allowed to fight you."

"That remains to be seen," answered the major.

"But how has he offended you?  He never uttered a word.  Two old 
cornrades too; it is absurd."

The major made a vague gesture.  "No matter.  He annoyed me."

He could never be made to say anything else.  Nothing more as to his 
motive was ever known.  All the same, the scandal was a terrible 
one.  The regiment was inclined to believe that Melanie, incensed by 
the captain's defection, had contrived to entrap the major, telling 
him some aboininable stories and prevailing upon him to insult and 
strike Burle publicly.  Who would have thought it of that old fogy 
Laguitte, who professed to be a woman hater? they said.  So he, too, 
had been caught at last.  Despite the general indignation against 
Melanie, this adventure made her very conspicuous, and her 
establishment soon drove a flourishing business.

On the following day the colonel summoned the major and the captain 
into his presence.  He censured them sternly, accusing them of 
disgracing their uniform by frequenting unseemly haunts.  What 
resolution had they come to, he asked, as he could not authorize 
them to fight?  This same question had occupied the whole regiment 
for the last twenty-four hours.  Apologies were unacceptable on 
account of the blow, but as Laguitte was almost unable to stand, it 
was hoped that, should the colonel insist upon it, some 
reconciliation might be patched up.

"Come," said the colonel, "will you accept me as arbitrator?"

"I beg your pardon, Colonel," interrupted the major; "I have brought 
you my resignation.  Here it is.  That settles everything.  Please 
name the day for the duel."

Burle looked at Laguitte in amazement, and the colonel thought it 
his duty to protest.

"This is a most serious step, Major," he began.  "Two years more and 
you would be entitled to your full pension."

But again did Laguitte cut him short, saying gruffly, "That is my 
own affair."

"Oh, certainly!  Well, I will send in your resignation, and as soon 
as it is accepted I will fix a day for the duel."

The unexpected turn that events had taken startled the regiment.  
What possessed that lunatic major to persist in cutting the throat 
of his old comrade Burle?  The officers again discussed Melanie; 
they even began to dream of her.  There must surely be something 
wonderful about her since she had completely fascinated two such 
tough old veterans and brought them to a deadly feud.  Morandot, 
having met Laguitte, did not disguise his concern.  If he--the 
major--was not killed, what would he live upon?  He had no fortune, 
and the pension to which his cross of the Legion of Honor entitled 
him, with the half of a full regimental pension which he would 
obtain on resigning, would barely find him in bread.  While Morandot 
was thus speaking Laguitte simply stared before him with his round 
eyes, persevering in the dumb obstinacy born of his narrow mind; and 
when his companion tried to question him regarding his hatred for 
Burle, he simply made the same vague gesture as before and once 
again repeated:

"He annoyed me; so much the worse."

Every morning at mess and at the canteen the first words were: "Has 
the acceptance of the major's resignation arrived?"  The duel was 
impatiently expected and ardently discussed.  The majority believed 
that Laguitte would be run through the body in three seconds, for it 
was madness for a man to fight with a paralyzed leg which did not 
even allow him to stand upright.  A few, however, shook their heads.  
Laguitte had never been a marvel of intellect, that was true; for 
the last twenty years, indeed, he had been held up as an example of 
stupidity, but there had been a time when he was known as the best 
fencer of the regiment, and although he had begun as a drummer he 
had won his epaulets as the commander of a battalion by the sanguine 
bravery of a man who is quite unconscious of danger.  On the other 
hand, Burle fenced indifferently and passed for a poltroon.  
However, they would soon know what to think.

Meanwhile the excitement became more and more intense as the 
acceptance of Laguitte's resignation was so long in coming.  The 
major was unmistakably the most anxious and upset of everybody.  A 
week had passed by, and the general inspection would commence two 
days later.  Nothing, however, had come as yet.  He shuddered at the 
thought that he had, perhaps, struck his old friend and sent in his 
resignation all in vain, without delaying the exposure for a single 
minute.  He had in reality reasoned thus: If he himself were killed 
he would not have the worry of witnessing the scandal, and if he 
killed Burle, as he expected to do, the affair would undoubtedly be 
hushed up.  Thus he would save the honor of the army, and the little 
chap would be able to get in at Saint-Cyr.  Ah, why wouldn't those 
wretched scribblers at the War Office hurry up a bit?  The major 
could not keep still but was forever wandering about before the post 
office, stopping the estafettes and questioning the colonel's 
orderly to find out if the acceptance had arrived.  He lost his 
sleep and, careless as to people's remarks, he leaned more and more 
heavily on his stick, hobbling about with no attempt to steady his 
gait.

On the day before that fixed for the inspection he was, as usual, on 
his way to the colonel's quarters when he paused, startled, to see 
Mme Burle (who was taking Charles to school) a few paces ahead of 
him.  He had not met her since the scene at the Cafe de Paris, for 
she had remained in seclusion at home.  Unmanned at thus meeting 
her, he stepped down to leave the whole sidewalk free.  Neither he 
nor the old lady bowed, and the little boy lifted his large 
inquisitive eyes in mute surprise.  Mme Burle, cold and erect, 
brushed past the major without the least sign of emotion or 
recognition.  When she had passed he looked after her with an 
expression of stupefied compassion.

"Confound it, I am no longer a man," he growled, dashing away a 
tear.

When he arrived at the colonel's quarters a captain in attendance 
greeted him with the words: "It's all right at last.  The papers 
have come."

"Ah!" murmured Laguitte, growing very pale.

And again he beheld the old lady walking on, relentlessly rigid and 
holding the little boy's hand.  What!  He had longed so eagerly for 
those papers for eight days past, and now when the scraps had come 
he felt his brain on fire and his heart lacerated.

The duel took place on the morrow, in the barrack yard behind a low 
wall.  The air was keen, the sun shining brightly.  Laguitte had 
almost to be carried to the ground; one of his seconds supported him 
on one side, while on the other he leaned heavily, on his stick.  
Burle looked half asleep; his face was puffy with unhealthy fat, as 
if he had spent a night of debauchery.  Not a word was spoken.  They 
were all anxious to have it over.

Captain Doucet crossed the swords of the two adversaries and then 
drew back, saying: "Set to, gentlemen."

Burle was the first to attack; he wanted to test Laguitte's strength 
and ascertain what he had to expect.  For the last ten days the 
encounter had seemed to him a ghastly nightmare which he could not 
fathom.  At times a hideous suspicion assailed him, but he put it 
aside with terror, for it meant death, and he refused to believe 
that a friend could play him such a trick, even to set things right.  
Besides, Laguitte's leg reasssured him; he would prick the major on 
the shoulder, and then all would be over.

During well-nigh a couple of minutes the swords clashed, and then 
the captain lunged, but the major, recovering his old suppleness of 
wrist, parried in a masterly style, and if he had returned the 
attack Burle would have been pierced through.  The captain now fell 
back; he was livid, for he felt that he was at the mercy of the man 
who had just spared him.  At last he understood that this was an 
execution.

Laguitte, squarely poised on his infirm legs and seemingly turned to 
stone, stood waiting.  The two men looked at each other fixedly.  In 
Burle's blurred eyes there arose a supplication--a prayer for 
pardon.  He knew why he was going to die, and like a child he 
promised not to transgress again.  But the major's eyes remained 
implacable; honor had spoken, and he silenced his emotion and his 
pity.

"Let it end," he muttered between his teeth.

Then it was he who attacked.  Like a flash of lightning his sword 
flamed, flying from right to left, and then with a resistless thrust 
it pierced the breast of the captain, who fell like a log without 
even a groan.

Laguitte had released his hold upon his sword and stood gazing at 
that poor old rascal Burle, who was stretched upon his back with his 
fat stomach bulging out.

"Oh, my God!  My God!" repeated the major furiously and 
despairingly, and then he began to swear.

They led him away, and, both his legs failing him, he had to be 
supported on either side, for he could not even use his stick.

Two months later the ex-major was crawling slowly along in the 
sunlight down a lonely street of Vauchamp, when he again found 
himself face to face with Mme Burle and little Charles.  They were 
both in deep mourning.  He tried to avoid them, but he now only 
walked with difficulty, and they advanced straight upon him without 
hurrying or slackening their steps.  Charles still had the same 
gentle, girlish, frightened face, and Mme Burle retained her stern, 
rigid demeanor, looking even harsher than ever.

As Laguitte shrank into the corner of a doorway to leave the whole 
street to them, she abruptly stopped in front of him and stretched 
out her hand.  He hesitated and then took it and pressed it, but he 
trembled so violently that he made the old lady's arm shake.  They 
exchanged glances in silence.

"Charles," said the boy's grandmother at last, "shake hands with the 
major."  The boy obeyed without understanding.  The major, who was 
very pale, barely ventured to touch the child's frail fingers; then, 
feeling that he ought to speak, he stammered out: "You still intend 
to send him to Saint-Cyr?"

"Of course, when he is old enough," answered Mme Burle.

But during the following week Charles was carried off by typhoid 
fever.  One evening his grandmother had again read him the story of 
the Vengeur to make him bold, and in the night he had become 
delirious.  The poor little fellow died of fright.





THE DEATH OF OLIVIER BECAILLE



CHAPTER I

MY PASSING


It was on a Saturday, at six in the morning, that I died after a 
three days' illness.  My wife was searching a trunk for some linen, 
and when she rose and turned she saw me rigid, with open eyes and 
silent pulses.  She ran to me, fancying that I had fainted, touched 
my hands and bent over me.  Then she suddenly grew alarmed, burst 
into tears and stammered:

"My God, my God!  He is dead!"

I heard everything, but the sounds seemed to come from a great 
distance.  My left eye still detected a faint glimmer, a whitish 
light in which all objects melted, but my right eye was quite bereft 
of sight.  It was the coma of my whole being, as if a thunderbolt 
had struck me.  My will was annihilated; not a fiber of flesh obeyed 
my bidding.  And yet amid the impotency of my inert limbs my 
thoughts subsisted, sluggish and lazy, still perfectly clear.

My poor Marguerite was crying; she had dropped on her knees beside 
the bed, repeating in heart-rending tones:

"He is dead!  My God, he is dead!"

Was this strange state of torpor, this immobility of the flesh, 
really death, although the functions of the intellect were not 
arrested?  Was my soul only lingering for a brief space before it 
soared away forever?  From my childhood upward I had been subject to 
hysterical attacks, and twice in early youth I had nearly succumbed 
to nervous fevers.  By degrees all those who surrounded me had got 
accustomed to consider me an invalid and to see me sickly.  So much 
so that I myself had forbidden my wife to call in a doctor when I 
had taken to my bed on the day of our arrival at the cheap 
lodginghouse of the Rue Dauphine in Paris.  A little rest would soon 
set me right again; it was only the fatigue of the journey which had 
caused my intolerable weariness.  And yet I was conscious of having 
felt singularly uneasy.  We had left our province somewhat abruptly; 
we were very poor and had barely enough money to support ourselves 
till I drew my first month's salary in the office where I had 
obtained a situation.  And now a sudden seizure was carrying me off!

Was it really death?  I had pictured to myself a darker night, a 
deeper silence.  As a little child I had already felt afraid to die.  
Being weak and compassionately petted by everyone, I had concluded 
that I had not long to live, that I should soon be buried, and the 
thought of the cold earth filled me with a dread I could not master--
a dread which haunted me day and night.  As I grew older the same 
terror pursued me.  Sometimes, after long hours spent in reasoning 
with myself, I thought that I had conquered my fear.  I reflected, 
"After all, what does it matter?  One dies and all is over.  It is 
the common fate; nothing could be better or easier."

I then prided myself on being able to look death boldly in the face, 
but suddenly a shiver froze my blood, and my dizzy anguish returned, 
as if a giant hand had swung me over a dark abyss.  It was some 
vision of the earth returning and setting reason at naught.  How 
often at night did I start up in bed, not knowing what cold breath 
had swept over my slumbers but clasping my despairing hands and 
moaning, "Must I die?"  In those moments an icy horror would stop my 
pulses while an appalling vision of dissolution rose before me.  It 
was with difficulty that I could get to sleep again.  Indeed, sleep 
alarmed me; it so closely resembled death.  If I closed my eyes they 
might never open again--I might slumber on forever.

I cannot tell if others have endured the same torture; I only know 
that my own life was made a torment by i asleep.  You see, I am alive, and I love you."



CHAPTER II

FUNERAL PREPARATIONS


Marguerite's cries had attracted attention, for all at once the door 
was opened and a voice exclaimed: "What is the matter, neighbor?  Is 
he worse?"

I recognized the voice; it was that of an elderly woman, Mme Gabin, 
who occupied a room on the same floor.  She had been most obliging 
since our arrival and had evidently become interested in our 
concerns.  On her own side she had lost no time in telling us her 
history.  A stern landlord had sold her furniture during the 
previous winter to pay himself his rent, and since then she had 
resided at the lodginghouse in the Rue Dauphine with her daughter 
Dede, a child of ten.  They both cut and pinked lamp shades, and 
between them they earned at the utmost only two francs a day.

"Heavens!  Is it all over?" cried Mme Gabin, looking at me.

I realt.  Death ever rose between 
me and all I loved; I can remember how the thought of it poisoned 
the happiest moments I spent with Marguerite.  During the first 
months of our married life, when she lay sleeping by my side and I 
dreamed of a fair future for her and with her, the foreboding of 
some fatal separation dashed my hopes aside and embittered my 
delights.  Perhaps we should be parted on the morrow--nay, perhaps 
in an hour's time.  Then utter discouragement assailed me; I 
wondered what the bliss of being united availed me if it were to end 
in so cruel a disruption.

My morbid imagination reveled in scenes of mourning.  I speculated 
as to who would be the first to depart, Marguerite or I.  Either 
alternative caused me harrowing grief, and tears rose to my eyes at 
the thought of our shattered lives.  At the happiest periods of my 
existence I often became a prey to grim dejection such as nobody 
could understand but which was caused by the thought of impending 
nihility.  When I was most successful I was to general wonder most 
depressed.  The fatal question, "What avails it?" rang like a knell 
in my ears.  But the sharpest sting of this torment was that it came 
with a secret sense of shame, which rendered me unable to confide my 
thoughts to another.  Husband and wife lying side by side in the 
darkened room may quiver with the same shudder and yet remain mute, 
for people do not mention death any more than they pronounce certain 
obscene words.  Fear makes it nameless.

I was musing thus while my dear Marguerite knelt sobbing at my feet.  
It grieved me sorely to be unable to comfort her by telling her that 
I suffered no pain.  If death were merely the annihilation of the 
flesh it had been foolish of me to harbor so much dread.  I 
experienced a selfish kind of restfulness in which all my cares were 
forgotten.  My memory had become extraordinarily vivid.  My whole 
life passed before me rapidly like a play in which I no longer acted 
a part; it was a curious and enjoyable sensation--I seemed to hear a 
far-off voice relating my own history.

I saw in particular a certain spot in the country near Guerande, on 
the way to Piriac.  The road turns sharply, and some scattered pine 
trees carelessly dot a rocky slope.  When I was seven years old I 
used to pass through those pines with my father as far as a 
crumbling old house, where Marguerite's parents gave me pancakes.  
They were salt gatherers and earned a scanty livelihood by working 
the adjacent salt marshes.  Then I remembered the school at Nantes, 
where I had grown up, leading a monotonous life within its ancient 
wallis and yearning for the broad horizon of Guerande and the salt 
marshes stretching to the limitless sea widening under the sky.

Next came a blank--my father was dead.  I entered the hospital as 
clerk to the managing board and led a dreary life with one solitary 
diversion: my Sunday visits to the old house on Piriac road.  The 
saltworks were doing badly; poverty reigned in the land, and 
Marguerite's parents were nearly penniless.  Marguerite, when merely 
a child, had been fond of me because I trundled her about in a 
wheelbarrow, but on the morning when I asked her in marriage she 
shrank from me with a frightened gesture, and I realized that she 
thought me hideous.  Her parents, however, consented at once; they 
looked upon my offer as a godsend, and the daughter submissively 
acquiesced.  When she became accustomed to the idea of marrying me 
she did not seem to dislike it so much.  On our wedding day at 
Guerande the rain fell in torrents, and when we got home my bride 
had to take off her dress, which was soaked through, and sit in her 
petticoats.

That was all the youth I ever had.  We did not remain long in our 
province.  One day I found my wife in tears.  She was miserable; 
life was so dull; she wanted to get away.  Six months later I had 
saved a little money by taking in extra work after office hours, and 
through the influence of a friend of my father's I obtained a petty 
appointment in Paris.  I started off to settle there with the dear 
little woman so that she might cry no more.  During the night, which 
we spent in the third-class railway carriage, the seats being very 
hard, I took her in my arms in order that she might sleep.

That was the past, and now I had just died on the narrow couch of a 
Paris lodginghouse, and my wife was crouching on the floor, crying 
bitterly.  The white light before my left eye was growing dim, but I 
remembered the room perfectly.  On the left there was a chest of 
drawers, on the right a mantelpiece surmounted by a damaged clock 
without a pendulum, the hands of which marked ten minutes past ten.  
The window overlooked the Rue Dauphine, a long, dark street.  All 
Paris seemed to pass below, and the noise was so great that the 
window shook.

We knew nobody in the city; we had hurried our departure, but I was 
not expected at the office till the following Monday.  Since I had 
taken to my bed I had wondered at my imprisonment in this narrow 
room into which we had tumbled after a railway journey of fifteen 
hours, followed by a hurried, confusing transit through the noisy 
streets.  My wife had nursed me with smiling tenderness, but I knew 
that she was anxious.  She would walk to the window, glance out and 
return to the bedside, looking very pale and startled by the sight 
of the busy thoroughfare, the aspect of the vast city of which she 
did not know a single stone and which deafened her with its 
continuous roar.  What would happen to her if I never woke up again--
alone, friendless and unknowing as she was?

Marguerite had caught hold of one of my hands which lay passive on 
the coverlet, and, covering it with kisses, she repeated wildly: 
"Olivier, answer me.  Oh, my God, he is dead, dead!"

So death was not complete annihilation.  I could hear and think.  I 
had been uselessly alarmed all those years.  I had not dropped into 
utter vacancy as I had anticipated.  I could not picture the 
disappearance of my being, the suppression of all that I had been, 
without the possibility of renewed existence.  I had been wont to 
shudder whenever in any book or newspaper I came across a date of a 
hundred years hence.  A date at which I should no longer be alive, a 
future which I should never see, filled me with unspeakable 
uneasiness.  Was I not the whole world, and would not the universe 
crumble away when I was no more?

To dream of life had been a cherished vision, but this could not 
possibly be death.  I should assuredly awake presently.  Yes, in a 
few moments I would lean over, take Marguerite in my arms and dry 
her tears.  I would rest a little while longer before going to my 
office, and then a new life would begin, brighter than the last.  
However, I did not feel impatient; the commotion had been too 
strong.  It was wrong of Marguerite to give way like that when I had 
not even the strength to turn my head on the pillow and smile at 
her.  The next time that she moaned out, "He is dead!  Dead!" I 
would embrace her and murmer softly so as not to startle her: "No, 
my darling, I was onlyzed that she was drawing nearer.  She examined me, touched me 
and, turning to Marguerite, murmured compassionately: "Poor girl!  
Poor girl!"

My wife, wearied out, was sobbing like a child.  Mme Gabin lifted 
her, placed her in a dilapidated armchair near the fireplace and 
proceeded to comfort her.

"Indeed, you'll do yourself harm if you go on like this, my dear.  
It's no reason because your husband is gone that you should kill 
yourself with weeping.  Sure enough, when I lost Gabin I was just 
like you.  I remained three days without swallowing a morsel of 
food.  But that didn't help me--on the contrary, it pulled me down.  
Come, for the Lord's sake, be sensible!"

By degrees Marguerite grew calmer; she was exhausted, and it was 
only at intervals that she gave way to a fresh flow of tears.  
Meanwhile the old woman had taken possession of the room with a sort 
of rough authority.

"Don't worry yourself," she said as she bustled about.  "Neighbors 
must help each other.  Luckily Dede has just gone to take the work 
home.  Ah, I see your trunks are not yet all unpacked, but I suppose 
there is some linen in the chest of drawers, isn't there?"

I heard her pull a drawer open; she must have taken out a napkin 
which she spread on the little table at the bedside.  She then 
struck a match, which made me think that she was lighting one of the 
candles on the mantelpiece and placing it near me as a religious 
rite.  I could follow her movements in the room and divine all her 
actions.

"Poor gentleman," she muttered.  "Luckily I heard you sobbing, poor 
dear!"  Suddenly the vague light which my left eye had detected 
vanished.  Mme Gabin had just closed my eyelids, but I had not felt 
her finger on my face.  When I understood this I felt chilled.

The door had opened again, and Dede, the child of ten, now rushed 
in, calling out in her shrill voice: "Mother, Mother!  Ah, I knew 
you would be here!  Look here, there's the money--three francs and 
four sous.  I took back three dozen lamp shades."

"Hush, hush!  Hold your tongue," vainly repeated the mother, who, as 
the little girl chattered on, must have pointed to the bed, for I 
guessed that the child felt perplexed and was backing toward the 
door.

"Is the gentleman asleep?" she whispered.

"Yes, yes--go and play," said Mme Gabin.

But the child did not go.  She was, no doubt, staring at me with 
widely opened eyes, startled and vaguely comprehending.  Suddenly 
she seemed convulsed with terror and ran out, upsetting a chair.

"He is dead, Mother; he is dead!" she gasped.

Profound silence followed.  Marguerite, lying back in the armchair, 
had left off crying.  Mme Gabin was still rummaging about the room 
and talking under her breath.

"Children know everything nowadays.  Look at that girl.  Heaven 
knows how carefully she's brought up!  When I send her on an errand 
or take the shades back I calculate the time to a minute so that she 
can't loiter about, but for all that she learns everything.  She saw 
at a glance what had happened here--and yet I never showed her but 
one corpse, that of her uncle Francois, and she was then only four 
years old.  Ah well, there are no children left--it can't be 
helped."

She paused and without any transition passed to another subject.

"I say, dearie, we must think of the formalities--there's the 
declaration at the municipal offices to be made and the seeing about 
the funeral.  You are not in a fit state to attend to business.  
What do you say if I look in at Monsieur Simoneau's to find out if 
he's at home?"

Marguerite did not reply.  It seemed to me that I watched her from 
afar and at times changed into a subtle flame hovering above the 
room, while a stranger lay heavy and unconscious on my bed.  I 
wished that Marguerite had declined the assistance of Simoneau.  I 
had seen him three or four times during my brief illness, for he 
occupied a room close to ours and had been civil and neighborly.  
Mme Gabin had told us that he was merely making a short stay in 
Paris, having come to collect some old debts due to his father, who 
had settled in the country and recently died.  He was a tall, 
strong, handsome young man, and I hated him, perhaps on account of 
his healthy appearance.  On the previous evening he had come in to 
make inquiries, and I had much disliked seeing him at Marguerite's 
side; she had looked so fair and pretty, and he had gazed so 
intently into her face when she smilingly thanked him for his 
kindness.

"Ah, here is Monsieur Simoneau," said Mme Gabin, introducing him.

He gently pushed the door ajar, and as soon as Marguerite saw him 
enter she burst into a flood of tears.  The presence of a friend, of 
the only person she knew in Paris besides the old woman, recalled 
her bereavement.  I could not see the young man, but in the darkness 
that encompassed me I conjured up his appearance.  I pictured him 
distinctly, grave and sad at finding poor Marguerite in such 
distress.  How lovely she must have looked with her golden hair 
unbound, her pale face and her dear little baby hands burning with 
fever!

"I am at your disposal, madame," he said softly.  "Pray allow me to 
manage everything."

She only answered him with broken words, but as the young man was 
leaving, accompanied by Mme Gabin, I heard the latter mention money.  
These things were always expensive, she said, and she feared that 
the poor little body hadn't a farthing--anyhow, he might ask her.  
But Simoneau silenced the old woman; he did not want to have the 
widow worried; he was going to the municipal office and to the 
undertaker's.

When silence reigned once more I wondered if my nightmare would last 
much longer.  I was certainly alive, for I was conscious of passing 
incidents, and I began to realize my condition.  I must have fallen 
into one of those cataleptic states that I had read of.  As a child 
I had suffered from syncopes which had lasted several hours, but 
surely my heart would beat anew, my blood circulate and my muscles 
relax.  Yes, I should wake up and comfort Marguerite, and, reasoning 
thus, I tried to be patient.

Time passed.  Mme Gabin had brought in some breakfast, but 
Marguerite refused to taste any food.  Later on the afternoon waned.  
Through the open window I heard the rising clamor of the Rue 
Dauphine.  By and by a slight ringing of the brass candlestick on 
the marble-topped table made me think that a fresh candle had been 
lighted.  At last Simoneau returned.

"Well?" whispered the old woman.

"It is all settled," he answered; "the funeral is ordered for 
tomorrow at eleven.  There is nothing for you to do, and you needn't 
talk of these things before the poor lady."

Nevertheless, Mme Gabin remarked: "The doctor of the dead hasn't 
come yet."

Simoneau took a seat beside Marguerite and after a few words of 
encouragement remained silent.  The funeral was to take place at 
eleven!  Those words rang in my brain like a passing bell.  And the 
doctor coming--the doctor of the dead, as Mme Gabin had called him.  
HE could not possibly fail to find out that I was only in a state of 
lethargy; he would do whatever might be necessary to rouse me, so I 
longed for his arrival with feverish anxiety.

The day was drawing to a close.  Mme Gabin, anxious to waste no 
time, had brought in her lamp shades and summoned Dede without 
asking Marguerite's permission.  "To tell the truth," she observed, 
"I do not like to leave children too long alone."

"Come in, I say," she whispered to the little girl; "come in, and 
don't be frightened.  Only don't look toward the bed or you'll catch 
it."

She thought it decorous to forbid Dede to look at me, but I was 
convinced that the child was furtively glancing at the corner where 
I lay, for every now and then I heard her mother rap her knuckles 
and repeat angrily: "Get on with your work or you shall leave the 
room, and the gentleman will come during the night and pull you by 
the feet."

The mother and daughter had sat down at our table.  I could plainly 
hear the click of their scissors as they clipped the lamp shades, 
which no doubt required very delicate manipulation, for they did not 
work rapidly.  I counted the shades one by one as they were laid 
aside, while my anxiety grew more and more intense.

The clicking of the scissors was the only noise in the room, so I 
concluded that Marguerite had been overcome by fatigue and was 
dozing.  Twice Simoneau rose, and the torturing thought flashed 
through me that he might be taking advantage of her slumbers to 
touch her hair with his lips.  I hardly knew the man and yet felt 
sure that he loved my wife.  At last little Dede began to giggle, 
and her laugh exasperated me.

"Why are you sniggering, you idiot?" asked her mother.  "Do you want 
to be turned out on the landing?  Come, out with it; what makes you 
laugh so?"

The child stammered: she had not laughed; she had only coughed, but 
I felt certain she had seen Simoneau bending over Marguerite and had 
felt amused.

The lamp had been lit when a knock was heard at the door.

"It must be the doctor at last," said the old woman.

It was the doctor; he did not apologize for coming so late, for he 
had no doubt ascended many flights of stairs during the day.  The 
room being but imperfectly lighted by the lamp, he inquired: "Is the 
body here?"

"Yes, it is," answered Simoneau.

Marguerite had risen, trembling violently.  Mme Gabin dismissed 
Dede, saying it was useless that a child should be present, and then 
she tried to lead my wife to the window, to spare her the sight of 
what was about to take place.

The doctor quickly approached the bed.  I guessed that he was bored, 
tired and impatient.  Had he touched my wrist?  Had he placed his 
hand on my heart?  I could not tell, but I fancied that he had only 
carelessly bent over me.

"Shall I bring the lamp so that you may see better?" asked Simoneau 
obligingly.

"No it is not necessary," quietly answered the doctor.

Not necessary!  That man held my life in his hands, and he did not 
think it worth while to proceed to a careful examination!  I was not 
dead!  I wanted to cry out that I was not dead!

"At what o'clock did he die?" asked the doctor.

"At six this morning," volunteered Simoneau.

A feeling of frenzy and rebellion rose within me, bound as I was in 
seemingly iron chains.  Oh, for the power of uttering one word, of 
moving a single limb!

"This close weather is unhealthy," resumed the doctor; "nothing is 
more trying than these early spring days."

And then he moved away.  It was like my life departing.  Screams, 
sobs and insults were choking me, struggling in my convulsed throat, 
in which even my breath was arrested.  The wretch!  Turned into a 
mere machine by professional habits, he only came to a deathbed to 
accomplish a perfunctory formality; he knew nothing; his science was 
a lie, since he could not at a glance distinguish life from death--
and now he was going--going!

"Good nighought helped to calm me.  It had just occurred to me that I 
had witnessed a case similar to my own when I was employed at the 
hospital of Guerande.  A man had been sleeping twenty-eight hours, 
the doctors hesitating in presence of his apparent lifelessness, 
when suddenly he had sat up in bed and was almost at once able to 
rise.  I myself had already been asleep for some twenty-five hours; 
if I awoke at ten I should still be in time.

I endeavored to ascertain who was in the room and what was going on 
there.  Dede must have been playing on the landing, for once when 
the door opened I heard her shrill childish laughter outside.  
Simoneau must have retired, for nothing indicated his presence.  Mme 
Gabin's slipshod tread was still audible over the floor.  At last 
she spoke.

"Come, my dear," she said.  "It is wrong of you not to take it while 
it is hot.  It, sir," said Simoneau.

There came a moment's silence; the doctor was probably bowing to 
Marguerite, who had turned while Mme Gabin was fastening the window.  
He left the room, and I heard his footsteps descending the stairs.

It was all over; I was condemned.  My last hope had vanished with 
that man.  If I did not wake before eleven on the morrow I should be 
buried alive.  The horror of that thought was so great that I lost 
all consciousness of my surroundings--'twas something like a 
fainting fit in death.  The last sound I heard was the clicking of 
the scissors handled by Mme Gabin and Dede.  The funeral vigil had 
begun; nobody spoke.

Marguerite had refused to retire to rest in the neighbor's room.  
She remained reclining in her armchair, with her beautiful face 
pale, her eyes closed and her long lashes wet with tears, while 
before her in the gloom Simoneau sat silently watching her.



CHAPTER III

THE PROCESSION


I cannot describe my agony during the morning of the following day.  
I remember it as a hideous dream in which my impressions were so 
ghastly and so confused that I could not formulate them.  The 
persistent yearning for a sudden awakening increased my torture, and 
as the hour for the funeral drew nearer my anguish became more 
poignant still.

It was only at daybreak that I had recovered a fuller consciousness 
of what was going on around me.  The creaking of hinges startled me 
out of my stupor.  Mme Gabin had just opened the window.  It must 
have been about seven o'clock, for I heard the cries of hawkers in 
the street, the shrill voice of a girl offering groundsel and the 
hoarse voice of a man shouting "Carrots!  The clamorous awakening of 
Paris pacified me at first.  I could not believe that I should be 
laid under the sod in the midst of so much life; and, besides, a 
sudden tht would cheer you up."

She was addressing Marguerite, and a slow trickling sound as of 
something filtering indicated that she had been making some coffee.

"I don't mind owning," she continued, "that I needed it.  At my age 
sitting up IS trying.  The night seems so dreary when there is a 
misfortune in the house.  DO have a cup of coffee, my dear--just a 
drop."

She persuaded Marguerite to taste it.

"Isn't it nice and hot?" she continued, "and doesn't it set one up?  
Ah, you'll be wanting all your strength presently for what you've 
got to go through today.  Now if you were sensible you'd step into 
my room and just wait there."

"No, I want to stay here," said Marguerite resolutely.

Her voice, which I had not heard since the previous evening, touched 
me strangely.  It was changed, broken as by tears.  To feel my dear 
wife near me was a last consolation.  I knew that her eyes were 
fastened on me and that she was weeping with all the anguish of her 
heart.

The minutes flew by.  An inexplicable noise sounded from beyond the 
door.  It seemed as if some people were bringing a bulky piece of 
furniture upstairs and knocking against the walls as they did so.  
Suddenly I understood, as I heard Marguerite begin to sob; it was 
the coffin.

"You are too early," said Mme Gabin crossly.  "Put it behind the 
bed."

What o'clock was it?  Nine, perhaps.  So the coffin had come.  Amid 
the opaque night around me I could see it plainly, quite new, with 
roughly planed boards.  Heavens!  Was this the end then?  Was I to 
be borne off in that box which I realized was lying at my feet?

However, I had one supreme joy.  Marguerite, in spite of her 
weakness, insisted upon discharging all the last offices.  Assisted 
by the old woman, she dressed me with all the tenderness of a wife 
and a sister.  Once more I felt myself in her arms as she clothed me 
in various garments.  She paused at times, overcome by grief; she 
clasped me convulsively, and her tears rained on my face.  Oh, how I 
longed to return her embrace and cry, "I live!"  And yet I was lying 
there powerless, motionless, inert!

"You are foolish," suddenly said Mme Gabin; "it is all wasted."

"Never mind," answered Marguerite, sobbing.  "I want him to wear his 
very best things."

I understood that she was dressing me in the clothes I had worn on 
my wedding day.  I had kept them carefully for great occasions.  
When she had finished she fell back exhausted in the armchair.

Simoneau now spoke; he had probably just entered the room.

"They are below," he whispered.

"Well, it ain't any too soon," answered Mme Gabin, also lowering her 
voice.  "Tell them to come up and get it over."

"But I dread the despair of the poor little wife."

The old woman seemed to reflect and presently resumed: "Listen to 
me, Monsieur Simoneau.  You must take her off to my room.  I 
wouldn't have her stop here.  It is for her own good.  When she is 
out of the way we'll get it done in a jiffy."

These words pierced my heart, and my anguish was intense when I 
realized that a struggle was actually taking place.  Simoneau had 
walked up to Marguerite, imploring her to leave the room.

"Do, for pity's sake, come with me!" he pleaded.  "Spare yourself 
useless pain."

"No, no!" she cried.  "I will remain till the last minute.  Remember 
that I have only him in the world, and when he is gone I shall be 
all alone!"

From the bedside Mme Gabin was prompting the young man.

"Don't parley--take hold of her, carry her off in your arms."

Was Simoneau about to lay his hands on Marguerite and bear her away?  
She screamed.  I wildly endeavored to rise, but the springs of my 
limbs were broken.  I remained rigid, unable to lift my eyelids to 
see what was going on.  The struggle continued, and my wife clung to 
the furniture, repeating, "Oh, don't, don't!  Have mercy!  Let me 
go!  I will not--"

He must have lifted her in his stalwart arms, for I heard her 
moaning like a child.  He bore her away; her sobs were lost in the 
distance, and I fancied I saw them both--he, tall and strong, 
pressing her to his breast; she, fainting, powerless and conquered, 
following him wherever he listed.

"Drat it all!  What a to-do!" muttered Mme Gabin.  "Now for the tug 
of war, as the coast is clear at last."

In my jealous madness I looked upon this incident as a monstrous 
outrage.  I had not been able to see Marguerite for twenty-four 
hours, but at least I had still heard her voice.  Now even this was 
denied me; she had been torn away; a man had eloped with her even 
before I was laid under the sod.  He was alone with her on the other 
side of the wall, comforting her--embracing her, perhaps!

But the door opened once more, and heavy footsteps shook the floor.

"Quick, make haste," repeated Mme Gabin.  "Get it done before the 
lady comes back."

She was speaking to some strangers, who merely answered her with 
uncouth grunts.

"You understand," she went on, "I am not a relation; I'm only a 
neighbor.  I have no interest in the matter.  It is out of pure good 
nature that I have mixed myself up in their affairs.  And I ain't 
overcheerful, I can tell you.  Yes, yes, I sat up the whole blessed 
night--it was pretty cold, too, about four o'clock.  That's a fact.  
Well, I have always been a fool--I'm too soft-hearted."

The coffin had been dragged into the center of the room.  As I had 
not awakened I was condemned.  All clearness departed from my ideas; 
everything seemed to revolve in a black haze, and I experienced such 
utter lassitude that it seemed almost a relief to leave off hoping.

"They haven't spared the material," said one of the undertaker's men 
in a gruff voice.  "The box is too long."

"He'll have all the more room," said the other, laughing.

I was not heavy, and they chuckled over it since they had three 
flights of stairs to descend.  As they were seizing me by the 
shoulders and feet I heard Mme Gabin fly into a violent passion.

"You cursed little brat," she screamed, "what do you mean by poking 
your nose where you're not wanted?  Look here, I'll teach you to spy 
and pry."

Dede had slipped her tousled head through the doorway to see how the 
gentleman was being put into the box.  Two ringing slaps resounded, 
however, by an explosion of sobs.  And as soon as the mother 
returned she began to gossip about her daughter for the benefit of 
the two men who were settling me in the coffin.

"She is only ten, you know.  She is not a bad girl, but she is 
frightfully inquisitive.  I do not beat her often; only I WILL be 
obeyed."

"Oh," said one of the men, "all kids are alike.  Whenever there is a 
corpse lying about they always want to see it."

I was commodiously stretched out, and I might have thought myself 
still in bed, had it not been that my left arm felt a trifle cramped 
from being squeezed against a board.  The men had been right.  I was 
pretty comfortable inside on account of my diminutive stature.

"Stop!" suddenly exclaimed Mme Gabin.  "I promised his wife to put a 
pillow under his head."

The men, who were in a hurry, stuffed in the pillow roughly.  One of 
them, who had mislaid his hammer, began to swear.  He had left the 
tool below and went to fetch it, dropping the lid, and when two 
sharp blows of the hammer drove in the first nail, a shock ran 
through my being--I had ceased to live.  The nails then entered in 
rapid succession with a rhythmical cadence.  It was as if some 
packers had been closing a case of dried fruit with easy dexterity.  
After that such sounds as reached me were deadened and strangely 
prolonged, as if the deal coffin had been changed into a huge 
musical box.  The last words spoken in the room of the Rue Dauphine--
at least the last ones that I heard distinctly--were uttered by Mme 
Gabin.

"Mind the staircase," she said; "the banister of the second flight 
isn't safe, so be careful."

While I was being carried down I experienced a sensation similar to 
that of pitching as when one is on board a ship in a rough sea.  
However, from that moment my impressions became more and more vague.  
I remember that the only distinct thought that still possessed me 
was an imbecile, impulsive curiosity as to the road by which I 
should be taken to the cemetery.  I was not acquainted with a single 
street of Paris, and I was ignorant of the position of the large 
burial grounds (though of course I had occasionally heard their 
names), and yet every effort of my mind was directed toward 
ascertaining whether we were turning to the right or to the left.  
Meanwhile the jolting of the hearse over the paving stones, the 
rumbling of passing vehicles, the steps of the foot passengers, all 
created a confused clamor, intensified by the acoustical properties 
of the coffin.

At first I followed our course pretty closely; then came a halt.  I 
was again lifted and carried about, and I concluded that we were in 
church, but when the funeral procession once more moved onward I 
lost all consciousness of the road we took.  A ringing of bells 
informed me that we were passing another church, and then the softer 
and easier progress of the wheels indicated that we were skirting a 
garden or park.  I was like a victim being taken to the gallows, 
awaiting in stupor a deathblow that never came.

At last they stopped and pulled me out of the hearse.  The business 
proceeded rapidly.  The noises had ceased; I knew that I was in a 
deserted space amid avenues of trees and with the broad sky over my 
head.  No doubt a few persons followed the bier, some of the 
inhabitants of the lodginghouse, perhaps--Simoneau and others, for 
instance--for faint whisperings reached my ear.  Then I heard a 
psalm chanted and some Latin words mumbled by a priest, and 
afterward I suddenly felt myself sinking, while the ropes rubbing 
against the edges of the coffin elicited lugubrious sounds, as if a 
bow were being drawn across the strings of a cracked violoncello.  
It was the end.  On the left side of my head I felt a violent shock 
like that produced by the bursting of a bomb, with another under my 
feet and a third more violent still on my chest.  So forcible, 
indeed, was this last one that I thought the lid was cleft atwain.  
I fainted from it.



CHAPTER IV

THE NAIL


It is impossible for me to say how long my swoon lasted.  Eternity 
is not of longer duration than one second spent in nihility.  I was 
no more.  It was slowly and confusedly that I regained some degree 
of consciousness.  I was still asleep, but I began to dream; a 
nightmare started into shape amid the blackness of my horizon, a 
nightmare compounded of a strange fancy which in other days had 
haunted my morbid imagination whenever with my propensity for 
dwelling upon hideous thoughts I had conjured up catastrophes.

Thus I dreamed that my wife was expecting me somewhere--at Guerande, 
I believe--and that I was going to join her by rail.  As we passed 
through a tunnel a deafening roll thundered over our head, and a 
sudden subsidence blocked up both issues of the tunnel, leaving our 
train intact in the center.  We were walled up by blocks of rock in 
the heart of a mountain.  Then a long and fearful agony commenced.  
No assistance could possibly reach us; even with powerful engines 
and incessant labor it would take a month to clear the tunnel.  We 
were prisoners there with no outlet, and so our death was only a 
question of time.

My fancy had often dwelt on that hideous drama and had constantly 
varied the details and touches.  My actors were men, women and 
children; their number increased to hundreds, and they were ever 
furnishing me with new incidents.  There were some provisions in the 
train, but these were soon exhausted, and the hungry passengers, if 
they did not actually devour human flesh, at least fought furiously 
over the last piece of bread.  Sometimes an aged man was driven back 
with blows and slowly perished; a mother struggled like a she-wolf 
to keep three or four mouthfuls for her child.  In my own 
compartment a bride and bridegroom were dying, clasped in each 
other's arms in mute despair.

The line was free along the whole length of the train, and people 
came and went, prowling round the carriages like beasts of prey in 
search of carrion.  All classes were mingled together.  A 
millionaire, a high functionary, it was said, wept on a workman's 
shoulder.  The lamps had been extinguished from the first, and the 
engine fire was nearly out.  To pass from one carriage to another it 
was necessary to grope about, and thus, too, one slowly reached the 
engine, recognizable by its enormous barrel, its cold, motionless 
flanks, its useless strength, its grim silence, in the overwhelming 
night.  Nothing could be more appalling than this train entombed 
alive with its passengers perishing one by one.

I gloated over the ghastliness of each detail; howls resounded 
through the vault; somebody whom one could not see, whose vicinity 
was not even suspected, would suddenly drop upon another's shoulder.  
But what affected me most of all was the cold and the want of air.  
I have never felt so chilled; a mantle of snow seemed to enwrap me; 
heavy moisture rained upon my skull; I was gasping; the rocky vault 
seemed to crush my chest; the whole mountain was seemingly weighing 
upon me.

Suddenly a cry of deliverance sounded.  For some time past we 
fancied that we could hear a dull sound, and we tried to hope that 
men were at work and that help was coming, but it came not thus.  
One of the passengers, however, had discovered an air shaft in the 
tunnel, and, crowding round, we all saw this shaft, above which we 
could discern a blue patch about the size of a wafer.  That blue 
patch filled us with rapture, for it was the sky.  We stretched 
ourselves and stood on tiptoes to breathe more freely.  Then we 
distinguished some black specks moving about, specks that must 
surely be workmen about to deliver us.  A furious clamor arose.  The 
cry "Saved! Saved!" burst from every mouth, while trembling arms 
were uplifted toward the tiny azure patch above.

That roar of voices aroused me.  Where was I?  In the tunnel, of 
course.  I was lying at full length; hard walls were pressing 
against my ribs.  Then I attempted to rise and struck my head 
roughly.  Was it the rock closing in on all sides?  The blue speck 
had vanished--aye, the sky had disappeared and I was still 
suffocating, shivering, with chattering teeth.

All at once I remembered.  Intense horror raised my hair on end.  I 
felt the hideous truth freeze me from head to foot like ice.  I had 
shaken off the long coma which for many hours had stricken me with 
corpselike rigidity.  Yes, I could move; my hands could feel the 
boards of my coffin; my lips parted; words came to me, and 
instinctively I called out Marguerite's name.  It was a scream I 
raised.  In that deal box my voice took so hoarse and weird a sound 
that it terrified me.  Oh, my God, was this thing true?  I was able 
to walk, speak, cry out that I was living, and yet my voice could 
not be heard; I was entombed under the earth.

I made a desperate effort to remain calm and reflect.  Was there no 
means of getting out?  Then my dream began afresh in my troubled 
brain.  The fanciful air shaft with the blue bit of sky overhead was 
mingled with the real grave in which I was lying.  I stared at the 
darkness with widely opened eyes; perhaps I might discover a hole, a 
slit, a glimmer of light, but only sparks of fire flitted through 
that night, with rays that broadened and then faded away.  I was in 
a somber abyss again.  With returning lucidity I struggled against 
these fatal visions.  Indeed, I should need all my reason if I meant 
to try to save myself.

The most immediate peril lay in an increasing sense of suffocation.  
If I had been able to live so long without air it was owing to 
suspended animation, which had changed all the normal conditions of 
my existence, but now that my heart beat and my lungs breathed I 
should die, asphyxiated, if I did not promptly liberate myself.  I 
also suffered from cold and dreaded lest I should succumb to the 
mortal numbness of those who fall asleep in the snow, never to wake 
again.  Still, while unceasingly realizing the necessity of 
remaining calm, I felt maddening blasts sweep through my brain, and 
to quiet my senses I exhorted myself to patience, trying to remember 
the circumstances of my burial.  Probably the ground had been bought 
for five years, and this would be against my chances of self-
deliverance, for I remembered having noticed at Nantes that in the 
trenches of the common graves one end of the last lowered coffins 
protruded into the next open cavity, in which case I should only 
have had to break through one plank.  But if I were in a separate 
hole, filled up above me with earth, the obstacles would prove too 
great.  Had I not been told that the dead were buried six feet deep 
in Paris?  How was I to get through the enormous mass of soil above 
me?  Even if I succeeded in slitting the lid of my bier open the 
mold would drift in like fine sand and fill my mouth and eyes.  That 
would be death again, a ghastly death, like drowning in mud.

However, I began to feel the planks carefully.  The coffin was 
roomy, and I found that I was able to move my arms with tolerable 
ease.  On both sides the roughly planed boards were stout and 
resistive.  I slipped my arm onto my chest to raise it over my head.  
There I discovered in the top plank a knot in the wood which yielded 
slightly at my pressure.  Working laboriously, I finally succeeded 
in driving out this knot, and on passing my finger through the hole 
I found that the earth was wet and clayey.  But that availed me 
little.  I even regretted having removed the knot, vaguely dreading 
the irruption of the mold.  A second experiment occupied me for a 
while.  I tapped all over the coffin to ascertain if perhaps there 
were any vacuum outside.  But the sound was everywhere the same.  At 
last, as I was slightly kicking the foot of the coffin, I fancied 
that it gave out a clearer echoing noise, but that might merely be 
produced by the sonority of the wood.

At any rate, I began to press against the boards with my arms and my 
closed fists.  In the same way, too, I used my knees, my back and my 
feet without eliciting even a creak from the wood.  I strained with 
all my strength, indeed, with so desperate an effort of my whole 
frame, that my bruised bones seemed breaking.  But nothing moved, 
and I became insane.

Until that moment I had held delirium at bay.  I had mastered the 
intoxicating rage which was mounting to my head like the fumes of 
alcohol; I had silenced my screams, for I feared that if I again 
cried out aloud I should be undone.  But now I yelled; I shouted; 
unearthly howls which I could not repress came from my relaxed 
throat.  I called for help in a voice that I did not recognize, 
growing wilder with each fresh appeal and crying out that I would 
not die.  I also tore at the wood with my nails; I writhed with the 
contortions of a caged wolf.  I do not know how long this fit of 
madness lasted, but I can still feel the relentless hardness of the 
box that imprisoned me; I can still hear the storm of shrieks and 
sobs with which I filled it; a remaining glimmer of reason made me 
try to stop, but I could not do so.

Great exhaustion followed.  I lay waiting for death in a state of 
somnolent pain.  The coffin was like stone, which no effort could 
break, and the conviction that I was powerless left me unnerved, 
without courage to make any fresh attempts.  Another suffering--
hunger--was presently added to cold and want of air.  The torture 
soon became intolerable.  With my finger I tried to pull small 
pinches of earth through the hole of the dislodged knot, and I 
swallowed them eagerly, only increasing my torment.  Tempted by my 
flesh, I bit my arms and sucked my skin with a fiendish desire to 
drive my teeth in, but I was afraid of drawing blood.

Then I ardently longed for death.  All my life long I had trembled 
at the thought of dissolution, but I had come to yearn for it, to 
crave for an everlasting night that could never be dark enough.  How 
childish it had been of me to dread the long, dreamless sleep, the 
eternity of silence and gloom!  Death was kind, for in suppressing 
life it put an end to suffering.  Oh, to sleep like the stones, to 
be no more!

With groping hands I still continued feeling the wood, and suddenly 
I pricked my left thumb.  That slight pain roused me from my growing 
numbness.  I felt again and found a nail--a nail which the 
undertaker's men had driven in crookedly and which had not caught in 
the lower wood.  It was long and very sharp; the head was secured to 
the lid, but it moved.  Henceforth I had but one idea--to possess 
myself of that nail--and I slipped my right hand across my body and 
began to shake it.  I made but little progress, however; it was a 
difficult job, for my hands soon tired, and I had to use them 
alternately.  The left one, too, was of little use on account of the 
nail's awkward position.

While I was obstinately persevering a plan dawned on my mind.  That 
nail meant salvation, and I must have it.  But should I get it in 
time?  Hunger was torturing me; my brain was swimming; my limbs were 
losing their strength; my mind was becoming confused.  I had sucked 
the drops that trickled from my punctured finger, and suddenly I bit 
my arm and drank my own blood!  Thereupon, spurred on by pain, 
revived by the tepid, acrid liquor that moistened my lips, I tore 
desperately at the nail and at last I wrenched it off!

I then believed in success.  My plan was a simple one; I pushed the 
point of the nail into the lid, dragging it along as far as I could 
in a straight line and working it so as to make a slit in the wood.  
My fingers stiffened, but I doggedly persevered, and when I fancied 
that I had sufficiently cut into the board I turned on my stomach 
and, lifting myself on my knees and elbows thrust the whole strength 
of my back against the lid.  But although it creaked it did not 
yield; the notched line was not deep enough.  I had to resume my old 
position--which I only managed to do with infinite trouble--and work 
afresh.  At last after another supreme effort the lid was cleft from 
end to end.

I was not saved as yet, but my heart beat with renewed hope.  I had 
ceased pushing and remained motionless, lest a sudden fall of earth 
should bury me.  I intended to use the lid as a screen and, thus 
protected, to open a sort of shaft in the clayey soil.  
Unfortunately I was assailed by unexpected difficulties.  Some heavy 
clods of earth weighed upon the boards and made them unmanageable; I 
foresaw that I should never reach the surface in that way, for the 
mass of soil was already bending my spine and crushing my face.

Once more I stopped, affrighted; then suddenly, while I was 
stretching my legs, trying to find something firm against which I 
might rest my feet, I felt the end board of the coffin yielding.  I 
at once gave a desperate kick with my heels in the faint hope that 
there might be a freshly dug grave in that direction.

It was so.  My feet abruptly forced their way into space.  An open 
grave was there; I had only a slight partition of earth to displace, 
and soon I rolled into the cavity.  I was saved!

I remained for a time lying on my back in the open grave, with my 
eyes raised to heaven.  It was dark; the stars were shining in a sky 
of velvety blueness.  Now and then the rising breeze wafted a 
springlike freshness, a perfume of foliage, upon me.  I was saved!  
I could breathe; I felt warm, and I wept and I stammered, with my 
arms prayerfully extended toward the starry sky.  O God, how sweet 
seemed life!



CHAPTER V

MY RESURRECTION


My first impulse was to find the custodian of the cemetery and ask 
him to have me conducted home, but various thoughts that came to me 
restrained me from following that course.  My return would create 
general alarm; why should I hurry now that I was master of the 
situation?  I felt my limbs; I had only an insignificant wound on my 
left arm, where I had bitten myself, and a slight feverishness lent 
me unhoped-for strength.  I should no doubt be able to walk unaided.

Still I lingered; all sorts of dim visions confused my mind.  I had 
felt beside me in the open grave some sextons' tools which had been 
left there, and I conceived a sudden desire to repair the damage I 
had done, to close up the hole through which I had crept, so as to 
conceal all traces of my resurrection.  I do not believe that I had 
any positive motive in doing so.  I only deemed it useless to 
proclaim my adventure aloud, feeling ashamed to find myself alive 
when the whole world thought me dead.  In half an hour every trace 
of my escape was obliterated, and then I climbed out of the hole.

The night was splendid, and deep silence reigned in the cemetery; 
the black trees threw motionless shadows over the white tombs.  When 
I endeavored to ascertain my bearings I noticed that one half of the 
sky was ruddy, as if lit by a huge conflagration; Paris lay in that 
direction, and I moved toward it, following a long avenue amid the 
darkness of the branches.

However, after I had gone some fifty yards I was compelled to stop, 
feeling faint and weary.  I then sat down on a stone bench and for 
the first time looked at myself.  I was fully attired with the 
exception that I had no hat.  I blessed my beloved Marguerite for 
the pious thought which had prompted her to dress me in my best 
clothes--those which I had worn at our wedding.  That remembrance of 
my wife brought me to my feet again.  I longed to see her without 
delay.

At the farther end of the avenue I had taken a wall arrested my 
progress.  However, I climbed to the top of a monument, reached the 
summit of the wall and then dropped over the other side.  Although 
roughly shaken by the fall, I managed to walk for a few minutes 
along a broad deserted street skirting the cemetery.  I had no 
notion as to where I might be, but with the reiteration of monomania 
I kept saying to myself that I was going toward Paris and that I 
should find the Rue Dauphine somehow or other.  Several people 
passed me but, seized with sudden distrust, I would not stop them 
and ask my way.  I have since realized that I was then in a burning 
fever and already nearly delirious.  Finally, just as I reached a 
large thoroughfare, I became giddy and fell heavily upon the 
pavement.

Here there is a blank in my life.  For three whole weeks I remained 
unconscious.  When I awoke at last I found myself in a strange room.  
A man who was nursing me told me quietly that he had picked me up 
one morning on the Boulevard Montparnasse and had brought me to his 
house.  He was an old doctor who had given up practicing.

When I attempted to thank him he sharply answered that my case had 
seemed a curious one and that he had wished to study it.  Moreover, 
during the first days of my convalescence he would not allow me to 
ask a single question, and later on he never put one to me.  For 
eight days longer I remained in bed, feeling very weak and not even 
trying to remember, for memory was a weariness and a pain.  I felt 
half ashamed and half afraid.  As soon as I could leave the house I 
would go and find out whatever I wanted to know.  Possibly in the 
delirium of fever a name had escaped me; however, the doctor never 
alluded to anything I may have said.  His charity was not only 
generous; it was discreet.

The summer had come at last, and one warm June morning I was 
permitted to take a short walk.  The sun was shining with that 
joyous brightness which imparts renewed youth to the streets of old 
Paris.  I went along slowly, questioning the passers-by at every 
crossing I came to and asking the way to Rue Dauphine.  When I 
reached the street I had some difficulty in recognizing the 
lodginghouse where we had alighted on our arrival in the capital.  A 
childish terror made me hesitate.  If I appeared suddenly before 
Marguerite the shock might kill her.  It might be wiser to begin by 
revealing myself to our neighbor Mme Gabin; still I shrank from 
taking a third party into confidence.  I seemed unable to arrive at 
a resolution, and yet in my innermost heart I felt a great void, 
like that left by some sacrifice long since consummated.

The building looked quite yellow in the sunshine.  I had just 
recognized it by a shabby eating house on the ground floor, where we 
had ordered our meals, having them sent up to us.  Then I raised my 
eyes to the last window of the third floor on the left-hand side, 
and as I looked at it a young woman with tumbled hair, wearing a 
loose dressing gown, appeared and leaned her elbows on the sill.  A 
young man followed and printed a kiss upon her neck.  It was not 
Marguerite.  Still I felt no surprise.  It seemed to me that I had 
dreamed all this with other things, too, which I was to learn 
presently.

For a moment I remained in the street, uncertain whether I had 
better go upstairs and question the lovers, who were still laughing 
in the sunshine.  However, I decided to enter the little restaurant 
below.  When I started on my walk the old doctor had placed a five-
franc piece in my hand.  No doubt I was changed beyond recognition, 
for my beard had grown during the brain fever, and my face was 
wrinkled and haggard.  As I took a seat at a small table I saw Mme 
Gabin come in carrying a cup; she wished to buy a penny-worth of 
coffee.  Standing in front of the counter, she began to gossip with 
the landlady of the establishment.

"Well," asked the latter, "so the poor little woman of the third 
floor has made up her mind at last, eh?"

"How could she help herself?" answered Mme Gabin.  "It was the very 
best thing for her to do.  Monsieur Simoneau showed her so much 
kindness.  You see, he had finished his business in Paris to his 
satisfaction, for he has inherited a pot of money.  Well, he offered 
to take her away with him to his own part of the country and place 
her with an aunt of his, who wants a housekeeper and companion.

The landlady laughed archly.  I buried my face in a newspaper which 
I picked off the table.  My lips were white and my hands shook.

"It will end in a marriage, of course," resumed Mme Gabin.  "The 
little widow mourned for her husband very properly, and the young 
man was extremely well behaved.  Well, they left last night--and, 
after all, they were free to please themselves."

Just then the side door of the restaurant, communicating with the 
passage of the house, opened, and Dede appeared.

"Mother, ain't you coming?" she cried.  "I'm waiting, you know; do 
be quick."

"Presently," said the mother testily.  "Don't bother."

The girl stood listening to the two women with the precocious 
shrewdness of a child born and reared amid the streets of Paris.

"When all is said and done," explained Mme Gabin, "the dear departed 
did not come up to Monsieur Simoneau.  I didn't fancy him overmuch; 
he was a puny sort of a man, a poor, fretful fellow, and he hadn't a 
penny to bless himself with.  No, candidly, he wasn't the kind of 
husband for a young and healthy wife, whereas Monsieur Simoneau is 
rich, you know, and as strong as a Turk."

"Oh yes!" interrupted Dede.  "I saw him once when he was washing--
his door was open.  His arms are so hairy!"

"Get along with you," screamed the old woman, shoving the girl out 
of the restaurant.  "You are always poking your nose where it has no 
business to be."

Then she concluded with these words: "Look here, to my mind the 
other one did quite right to take himself off.  It was fine luck for 
the little woman!"

When I found myself in the street again I walked along slowly with 
trembling limbs.  And yet I was not suffering much; I think I smiled 
once at my shadow in the sun.  It was quite true.  I WAS very puny.  
It had been a queer notion of mine to marry Marguerite.  I recalled 
her weariness at Guerande, her impatience, her dull, monotonous 
life.  The dear creature had been very good to me, but I had never 
been a real lover; she had mourned for me as a sister for her 
brother, not otherwise.  Why should I again disturb her life?  A 
dead man is not jealous.

When I lifted my eyelids I saw the garden of the Luxembourg before 
me.  I entered it and took a seat in the sun, dreaming with a sense 
of infinite restfulness.  The thought of Marguerite stirred me 
softly.  I pictured her in the provinces, beloved, petted and very 
happy.  She had grown handsomer, and she was the mother of three 
boys and two girls.  It was all right.  I had behaved like an honest 
man in dying, and I would not commit the cruel folly of coming to 
life again.

Since then I have traveled a good deal.  I have been a little 
everywhere.  I am an ordinary man who has toiled and eaten like 
anybody else.  Death no longer frightens me, but it does not seem to 
care for me now that I have no motive in living, and I sometimes 
fear that I have been forgotten upon earth.
Nana, Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille