chery 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.

On