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 ling