t 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 illuminated 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