onsieur 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