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 b