Meanwhile with slow and painful steps he sought for a church. But he had lost his bearings; the early hour had changed the face of the streets. Soon, however, as he turned the corner of the Rue de la Chaussee-d’Antin, he noticed a tower looming vaguely in the fog at the end of the Trinite Church. The white statues overlooking the bare garden seemed like so many chilly Venuses among the yellow foliage of a park. Under the porch he stood and panted a little, for the ascent of the wide steps had tired him. Then he went in. The church was very cold, for its heating apparatus had been fireless since the previous evening, and its lofty, vaulted aisles were full of a fine damp vapor which had come filtering through the windows. The aisles were deep in shadow; not a soul was in the church, and the only sound audible amid the unlovely darkness was that made by the old shoes of some verger or other who was dragging himself about in sulky semiwakefulness. Muffat, however, after knocking forlornly against an untidy collection of chairs, sank on his knees with bursting heart and propped himself against the rails in front of a little chapel close by a font. He clasped his hands and began searching within himself for suitable prayers, while his whole being yearned toward a transport. But only his lips kept stammering empty words; his heart and brain were far away, and with them he returned to the outer world and began his long, unresting march through the streets, as though lashed forward by implacable necessity. And he kept repeating, “O my God, come to my assistance! O my God, abandon not Thy creature, who delivers himself up to Thy justice! O my God, I adore Thee: Thou wilt not leave me to perish under the buffetings of mine enemies!” Nothing answered: the shadows and the cold weighed upon him, and the noise of the old shoes continued in the distance and prevented him praying. Nothing, indeed, save that tiresome noise was audible in the deserted church, where the matutinal sweeping was unknown before the early masses had somewhat warmed the air of the place. After that he rose to his feet with the help of a chair, his knees cracking under him as he did so. God was not yet there. And why should he weep in M. Venot’s arms? The man could do nothing.
And then mechanically he returned to Nana’s house. Outside he slipped, and he felt the tears welling to his eyes again, but he was not angry with his lot – he was only feeble and ill. Yes, he was too tired; the rain had wet him too much; he was nipped with cold, but the idea of going back to his great dark house in the Rue Miromesnil froze his heart. The house door at Nana’s was not open as yet, and he had to wait till the porter made his appearance. He smiled as he went upstairs, for he already felt penetrated by the soft warmth of that cozy retreat, where he would be able to stretch his limbs and go to sleep.
When Zoe opened the door to him she gave a start of most uneasy astonishment. Madame had been taken ill with an atrocious sick headache, and she hadn’t closed her eyes all night. Still, she could quite go and see whether Madame had gone to sleep for good. And with that she slipped into the bedroom while he sank back into one of the armchairs in the drawing room. But almost at that very moment Nana appeared. She had jumped out of bed and had scarce had time to slip on a petticoat. Her feet were bare, her hair in wild disorder, her nightgown all crumpled.
“What! You here again?” she cried with a red flush on her cheeks.
Up she rushed, stung by sudden indignation, in order herself to thrust him out of doors. But when she saw him in such sorry plight – nay, so utterly done for – she felt infinite pity.
“Well, you are a pretty sight, my dear fellow!” she continued more gently. “But what’s the matter? You’ve spotted them, eh? And it’s given you the hump?”
He did not answer; he looked like a broken-down animal. Nevertheless, she came to the conclusion that he still lacked proofs, and to hearten him up the said:
“You see now? I was on the wrong tack. Your wife’s an honest woman, on my word of honor! And now, my little friend, you must go home to bed. You want it badly.”
He did not stir.
“Now then, be off! I can’t keep you here. But perhaps you won’t presume to stay at such a time as this?”
“Yes, let’s go to bed,” he stammered.
She repressed a violent gesture, for her patience was deserting her. Was the man going crazy?
“Come, be off!” she repeated.
“No.”
But she flared up in exasperation, in utter rebellion.
“It’s sickening! Don’t you understand I’m jolly tired of your company? Go and find your wife, who’s making a cuckold of you. Yes, she’s making a cuckold of you. I say so – yes, I do now. There, you’ve got the sack! Will you leave me or will you not?”
Muffat’s eyes filled with tears. He clasped his hands together.
“Oh, let’s go to bed!”
At this Nana suddenly lost all control over herself and was choked by nervous sobs. She was being taken advantage of when all was said and done! What had these stories to do with her? She certainly had used all manner of delicate methods in order to teach him his lesson gently. And now he was for making her pay the damages! No, thank you! She was kindhearted, but not to that extent.
“The devil, but I’ve had enough of this!” she swore, bringing her fist down on the furniture. “Yes, yes, I wanted to be faithful – it was all I could do to be that! Yet if I spoke the word I could be rich tomorrow, my dear fellow!”
He looked up in surprise. Never once had he thought of the monetary question. If she only expressed a desire he would realize it at once; his whole fortune was at her service.
“No, it’s too late now,” she replied furiously. “I like men who give without being asked. No, if you were to offer me a million for a single interview I should say no! It’s over between us; I’ve got other fish to fry there! So be off or I shan’t answer for the consequences. I shall do something dreadful!”
She advanced threateningly toward him, and while she was raving, as became a good courtesan who, though driven to desperation, was yet firmly convinced of her rights and her superiority over tiresome, honest folks, the door opened suddenly and Steiner presented himself. That proved the finishing touch. She shrieked aloud:
“Well, I never. Here’s the other one!”
Bewildered by her piercing outcry, Steiner stopped short. Muffat’s unexpected presence annoyed him, for he feared an explanation and had been doing his best to avoid it these three months past. With blinking eyes he stood first on one leg, then on the other, looking embarrassed the while and avoiding the count’s gaze. He was out of breath, and as became a man who had rushed across Paris with good news, only to find himself involved in unforeseen trouble, his face was flushed and distorted.
“Que veux-tu, toi?” asked Nana roughly, using the second person singular in open mockery of the count.
“What – what do I – ” he stammered. “I’ve got it for you – you know what.”
“Eh?”
He hesitated. The day before yesterday she had given him to understand that if he could not find her a thousand francs to pay a bill with she would not receive him any more. For two days he had been loafing about the town in quest of the money and had at last made the sum up that very morning.
“The thousand francs!” he ended by declaring as he drew an envelope from his pocket.
Nana had not remembered.
“The thousand francs!” she cried. “D’you think I’m begging alms? Now look here, that’s what I value your thousand francs at!”
And snatching the envelope, she threw it full in his face. As became a prudent Hebrew, he picked it up slowly and painfully and then looked at the young woman with a dull expression of face. Muffat and he exchanged a despairing glance, while she put her arms akimbo in order to shout more loudly than before.
“Come now, will you soon have done insulting me? I’m glad you’ve come, too, dear boy, because now you see the clearance’ll be quite complete. Now then, gee up! Out you go!”
Then as they did not hurry in the least, for they were paralyzed:
“D’you mean to say I’m acting like a fool, eh? It’s likely enough! But you’ve bored me too much! And, hang it all, I’ve had enough of swelldom! If I die of what I’m doing – well, it’s my fancy!”
They sought to calm her; they begged her to listen to reason.
“Now then, once, twice, thrice! Won’t you go? Very well! Look there! I’ve got company.”
And with a brisk movement she flung wide the bedroom door. Whereupon in the middle of the tumbled bed the two men caught sight of Fontan. He had not expected to be shown off in this situation; nevertheless, he took things very easily, for he was used to sudden surprises on the stage. Indeed, after the first shock he even hit upon a grimace calculated to tide him honorably over his difficulty; he “turned rabbit,” as he phrased it, and stuck out his lips and wrinkled up his nose, so as completely to transform the lower half of his face. His base, satyrlike head seemed to exude incontinence. It was this man Fontan then whom Nana had been to fetch at the Varieties every day for a week past, for she was smitten with that fierce sort of passion which the grimacing ugliness of a low comedian is wont to inspire in the genus courtesan.
“There!” she said, pointing him out with tragic gesture.
Muffat, who hitherto had pocketed everything, rebelled at this affront.
“Bitch!” he stammered.
But Nana, who was once more in the bedroom, came back in order to have the last word.
“How am I a bitch? What about your wife?”
And she was off and, slamming the door with a bang, she noisily pushed to the bolt. Left alone, the two men gazed at one another in silence. Zoe had just come into the room, but she did not drive them out. Nay, she spoke to them in the most sensible manner. As became a woman with a head on her shoulders, she decided that Madame’s conduct was rather too much of a good thing. But she defended her, nonetheless: this union with the play actor couldn’t last; the madness must be allowed to pass off! The two men retired without uttering a sound. On the pavement outside they shook hands silently, as though swayed by a mutual sense of fraternity. Then they turned their backs on one another and went crawling off in opposite directions.
When at last Muffat entered his town house in the Rue Miromesnil his wife was just arriving. The two met on the great staircase, whose walls exhaled an icy chill. They lifted up their eyes and beheld one another. The count still wore his muddy clothes, and his pale, bewildered face betrayed the prodigal returning from his debauch. The countess looked as though she were utterly fagged out by a night in the train. She was dropping with sleep, but her hair had been brushed anyhow, and her eyes were deeply sunken.
CHAPTER VIII
We are in a little set of lodgings on the fourth floor in the Rue Veron at Montmartre. Nana and Fontan have invited a few friends to cut their Twelfth-Night cake with them. They are giving their housewarming, though they have been only three days settled.
They had no fixed intention of keeping house together, but the whole thing had come about suddenly in the first glow of the honeymoon. After her grand blowup, when she had turned the count and the banker so vigorously out of doors, Nana felt the world crumbling about her feet. She estimated the situation at a glance; the creditors would swoop down on her anteroom, would mix themselves up with her love affairs and threaten to sell her little all unless she continued to act sensibly. Then, too, there would be no end of disputes and carking anxieties if she attempted to save her furniture from their clutches. And so she preferred giving up everything. Besides, the flat in the Boulevard Haussmann was plaguing her to death. It was so stupid with its great gilded rooms! In her access of tenderness for Fontan she began dreaming of a pretty little bright chamber. Indeed, she returned to the old ideals of the florist days, when her highest ambition was to have a rosewood cupboard with a plate-glass door and a bed hung with blue “reps.” In the course of two days she sold what she could smuggle out of the house in the way of knickknacks and jewelry and then disappeared, taking with her ten thousand francs and never even warning the porter’s wife. It was a plunge into the dark, a merry spree; never a trace was left behind. In this way she would prevent the men from coming dangling after her. Fontain was very nice. He did not say no to anything but just let her do as she liked. Nay, he even displayed an admirable spirit of comradeship. He had, on his part, nearly seven thousand francs, and despite the fact that people accused him of stinginess, he consented to add them to the young woman’s ten thousand. The sum struck them as a solid foundation on which to begin housekeeping. And so they started away, drawing from their common hoard, in order to hire and furnish the two rooms in the Rue Veron, and sharing everything together like old friends. In the early days it was really delicious.
On Twelfth Night Mme Lerat and Louiset were the first to arrive. As Fontan had not yet come home, the old lady ventured to give expression to her fears, for she trembled to see her niece renouncing the chance of wealth.
“Oh, Aunt, I love him so dearly!” cried Nana, pressing her hands to her heart with the prettiest of gestures.
This phrase produced an extraordinary effect on Mme Lerat, and tears came into her eyes.
“That’s true,” she said with an air of conviction. “Love before all things!”
And with that she went into raptures over the prettiness of the rooms. Nana took her to see the bedroom, the parlor and the very kitchen. Gracious goodness, it wasn’t a vast place, but then, they had painted it afresh and put up new wallpapers. Besides, the sun shone merrily into it during the daytime.
Thereupon Mme Lerat detained the young woman in the bedroom, while Louiset installed himself behind the charwoman in the kitchen in order to watch a chicken being roasted. If, said Mme Lerat, she permitted herself to say what was in her mind, it was because Zoe had just been at her house. Zoe had stayed courageously in the breach because she was devoted to her mistress. Madame would pay her later on; she was in no anxiety about that! And amid the breakup of the Boulevard Haussmann establishment it was she who showed the creditors a bold front; it was she who conducted a dignified retreat, saving what she could from the wreck and telling everyone that her mistress was traveling. She never once gave them her address. Nay, through fear of being followed, she even deprived herself of the pleasure of calling on Madame. Nevertheless, that same morning she had run round to Mme Lerat’s because matters were taking a new turn. The evening before creditors in the persons of the upholsterer, the charcoal merchant and the laundress had put in an appearance and had offered to give Madame an extension of time. Nay, they had even proposed to advance Madame a very considerable amount if only Madame would return to her flat and conduct herself like a sensible person. The aunt repeated Zoe’s words. Without doubt there was a gentleman behind it all.
“I’ll never consent!” declared Nana in great disgust. “Ah, they’re a pretty lot those tradesmen! Do they think I’m to be sold so that they can get their bills paid? Why, look here, I’d rather die of hunger than deceive Fontan.”
“That’s what I said,” averred Mme Lerat. “‘My niece,’ I said, ‘is too noble-hearted!’”
Nana, however, was much vexed to learn that La Mignotte was being sold and that Labordette was buying it for Caroline Hequet at an absurdly low price. It made her angry with that clique. Oh, they were a regular cheap lot, in spite of their airs and graces! Yes, by Jove, she was worth more than the whole lot of them!
“They can have their little joke out,” she concluded, “but money will never give them true happiness! Besides, you know, Aunt, I don’t even know now whether all that set are alive or not. I’m much too happy.”
At that very moment Mme Maloir entered, wearing one of those hats of which she alone understood the shape. It was delightful meeting again. Mme Maloir explained that magnificence frightened her and that NOW, from time to time, she would come back for her game of bezique. A second visit was paid to the different rooms in the lodgings, and in the kitchen Nana talked of economy in the presence of the charwoman, who was basting the fowl, and said that a servant would have cost too much and that she was herself desirous of looking after things. Louiset was gazing beatifically at the roasting process.
But presently there was a loud outburst of voices. Fontan had come in with Bosc and Prulliere, and the company could now sit down to table. The soup had been already served when Nana for the third time showed off the lodgings.
“Ah, dear children, how comfortable you are here!” Bosc kept repeating, simply for the sake of pleasing the chums who were standing the dinner. At bottom the subject of the “nook,” as he called it, nowise touched him.
In the bedroom he harped still more vigorously on the amiable note. Ordinarily he was wont to treat women like cattle, and the idea of a man bothering himself about one of the dirty brutes excited within him the only angry feelings of which, in his comprehensive, drunken disdain of the universe, he was still capable.
“Ah, ah, the villains,” he continued with a wink, “they’ve done this on the sly. Well, you were certainly right. It will be charming, and, by heaven, we’ll come and see you!”
But when Louiset arrived on the scene astride upon a broomstick, Prulliere chuckled spitefully and remarked:
“Well, I never! You’ve got a baby already?”
This struck everybody as very droll, and Mme Lerat and Mme Maloir shook with laughter. Nana, far from being vexed, laughed tenderly and said that unfortunately this was not the case. She would very much have liked it, both for the little one’s sake and for her own, but perhaps one would arrive all the same. Fontan, in his role of honest citizen, took Louiset in his arms and began playing with him and lisping.
“Never mind! It loves its daddy! Call me ‘Papa,’ you little blackguard!”
“Papa, Papa!” stammered the child.
The company overwhelmed him with caresses, but Bosc was bored and talked of sitting down to table. That was the only serious business in life. Nana asked her guests’ permission to put Louiset’s chair next her own. The dinner was very merry, but Bosc suffered from the near neighborhood of the child, from whom he had to defend his plate. Mme Lerat bored him too. She was in a melting mood and kept whispering to him all sorts of mysterious things about gentlemen of the first fashion who were still running after Nana. Twice he had to push away her knee, for she was positively invading him in her gushing, tearful mood. Prulliere behaved with great incivility toward Mme Maloir and did not once help her to anything. He was entirely taken up with Nana and looked annoyed at seeing her with Fontan. Besides, the turtle doves were kissing so excessively as to be becoming positive bores. Contrary to all known rules, they had elected to sit side by side.
“Devil take it! Why don’t you eat? You’ve got plenty of time ahead of you!” Bosc kept repeating with his mouth full. “Wait till we are gone!”
But Nana could not restrain herself. She was in a perfect ecstasy of love. Her face was as full of blushes as an innocent young girl’s, and her looks and her laughter seemed to overflow with tenderness. Gazing on Fontan, she overwhelmed him with pet names – “my doggie, my old bear, my kitten” – and whenever he passed her the water or the salt she bent forward and kissed him at random on lips, eyes, nose or ear. Then if she met with reproof she would return to the attack with the cleverest maneuvers and with infinite submissiveness and the supple cunning of a beaten cat would catch hold of his hand when no one was looking, in order to kiss it again. It seemed she must be touching something belonging to him. As to Fontan, he gave himself airs and let himself be adored with the utmost condescension. His great nose sniffed with entirely sensual content; his goat face, with its quaint, monstrous ugliness, positively glowed in the sunlight of devoted adoration lavished upon him by that superb woman who was so fair and so plump of limb. Occasionally he gave a kiss in return, as became a man who is having all the enjoyment and is yet willing to behave prettily.
“Well, you’re growing maddening!” cried Prulliere. “Get away from her, you fellow there!”
And he dismissed Fontan and changed covers, in order to take his place at Nana’s side. The company shouted and applauded at this and gave vent to some stiffish epigrammatic witticisms. Fontan counterfeited despair and assumed the quaint expression of Vulcan crying for Venus. Straightway Prulliere became very gallant, but Nana, whose foot he was groping for under the table, caught him a slap to make him keep quiet. No, no, she was certainly not going to become his mistress. A month ago she had begun to take a fancy to him because of his good looks, but now she detested him. If he pinched her again under pretense of picking up her napkin, she would throw her glass in his face!
Nevertheless, the evening passed off well. The company had naturally begun talking about the Varietes. Wasn’t that cad of a Bordenave going to go off the hooks after all? His nasty diseases kept reappearing and causing him such suffering that you couldn’t come within six yards of him nowadays. The day before during rehearsal he had been incessantly yelling at Simonne. There was a fellow whom the theatrical people wouldn’t shed many tears over. Nana announced that if he were to ask her to take another part she would jolly well send him to the rightabout. Moreover, she began talking of leaving the stage; the theater was not to compare with her home. Fontan, who was not in the present piece or in that which was then being rehearsed, also talked big about the joy of being entirely at liberty and of passing his evenings with his feet on the fender in the society of his little pet. And at this the rest exclaimed delightedly, treating their entertainers as lucky people and pretending to envy their felicity.
The Twelfth-Night cake had been cut and handed round. The bean had fallen to the lot of Mme Lerat, who popped it into Bosc’s glass. Whereupon there were shouts of “The king drinks! The king drinks!” Nana took advantage of this outburst of merriment and went and put her arms round Fontan’s neck again, kissing him and whispering in his ear. But Prulliere, laughing angrily, as became a pretty man, declared that they were not playing the game. Louiset, meanwhile, slept soundly on two chairs. It was nearing one o’clock when the company separated, shouting au revoir as they went downstairs.
For three weeks the existence of the pair of lovers was really charming. Nana fancied she was returning to those early days when her first silk dress had caused her infinite delight. She went out little and affected a life of solitude and simplicity. One morning early, when she had gone down to buy fish IN PROPRIA PERSONA in La Rouchefoucauld Market, she was vastly surprised to meet her old hair dresser Francis face to face. His getup was as scrupulously careful as ever: he wore the finest linen, and his frock coat was beyond reproach; in fact, Nana felt ashamed that he should see her in the street with a dressing jacket and disordered hair and down-at-heel shoes. But he had the tact, if possible, to intensify his politeness toward her. He did not permit himself a single inquiry and affected to believe that Madame was at present on her travels. Ah, but Madame had rendered many persons unhappy when she decided to travel! All the world had suffered loss. The young woman, however, ended by asking him questions, for a sudden fit of curiosity had made her forget her previous embarrassment. Seeing that the crowd was jostling them, she pushed him into a doorway and, still holding her little basket in one hand, stood chatting in front of him. What were people saying about her high jinks? Good heavens! The ladies to whom he went said this and that and all sorts of things. In fact, she had made a great noise and was enjoying a real boom: And Steiner? M. Steiner was in a very bad way, would make an ugly finish if he couldn’t hit on some new commercial operation. And Daguenet? Oh, HE was getting on swimmingly. M. Daguenet was settling down. Nana, under the exciting influence of various recollections, was just opening her mouth with a view to a further examination when she felt it would be awkward to utter Muffat’s name. Thereupon Francis smiled and spoke instead of her. As to Monsieur le Comte, it was all a great pity, so sad had been his sufferings since Madame’s departure.
He had been like a soul in pain – you might have met him wherever Madame was likely to be found. At last M. Mignon had come across him and had taken him home to his own place. This piece of news caused Nana to laugh a good deal. But her laughter was not of the easiest kind.
“Ah, he’s with Rose now,” she said. “Well then, you must know, Francis, I’ve done with him! Oh, the canting thing! It’s learned some pretty habits – can’t even go fasting for a week now! And to think that he used to swear he wouldn’t have any woman after me!”
She was raging inwardly.
“My leavings, if you please!” she continued. “A pretty Johnnie for Rose to go and treat herself to! Oh, I understand it all now: she wanted to have her revenge because I got that brute of a Steiner away from her. Ain’t it sly to get a man to come to her when I’ve chucked him out of doors?”
“M. Mignon doesn’t tell that tale,” said the hairdresser. “According to his account, it was Monsieur le Comte who chucked you out. Yes, and in a pretty disgusting way too – with a kick on the bottom!”
Nana became suddenly very pale.
“Eh, what?” she cried. “With a kick on my bottom? He’s going too far, he is! Look here, my little friend, it was I who threw him downstairs, the cuckold, for he is a cuckold, I must inform you. His countess is making him one with every man she meets – yes, even with that good-for-nothing of a Fauchery. And that Mignon, who goes loafing about the pavement in behalf of his harridan of a wife, whom nobody wants because she’s so lean! What a foul lot! What a foul lot!”
She was choking, and she paused for breath
“Oh, that’s what they say, is it? Very well, my little Francis, I’ll go and look ‘em up, I will. Shall you and I go to them at once? Yes, I’ll go, and we’ll see whether they will have the cheek to go telling about kicks on the bottom. Kick’s! I never took one from anybody! And nobody’s ever going to strike me – d’ye see? – for I’d smash the man who laid a finger on me!”
Nevertheless, the storm subsided at last. After all, they might jolly well what they liked! She looked upon them as so much filth underfoot! It would have soiled her to bother about people like that. She had a conscience of her own, she had! And Francis, seeing her thus giving herself away, what with her housewife’s costume and all, became familiar and, at parting, made so bold as to give her some good advice. It was wrong of her to be sacrificing everything for the sake of an infatuation; such infatuations ruined existence. She listened to him with bowed head while he spoke to her with a pained expression, as became a connoisseur who could not bear to see so fine a girl making such a hash of things.
“Well, that’s my affair,” she said at last “Thanks all the same, dear boy.” She shook his hand, which despite his perfect dress was always a little greasy, and then went off to buy her fish. During the day that story about the kick on the bottom occupied her thoughts. She even spoke about it to Fontan and again posed as a sturdy woman who was not going to stand the slightest flick from anybody. Fontan, as became a philosophic spirit, declared that all men of fashion were beasts whom it was one’s duty to despise. And from that moment forth Nana was full of very real disdain.
That same evening they went to the Bouffes-Parisiens Theatre to see a little woman of Fontan’s acquaintance make her debut in a part of some ten lines. It was close on one o’clock when they once more trudged up the heights of Montmartre. They had purchased a cake, a “mocha,” in the Rue de la Chaussee-d’Antin, and they ate it in bed, seeing that the night was not warm and it was not worth while lighting a fire. Sitting up side by side, with the bedclothes pulled up in front and the pillows piled up behind, they supped and talked about the little woman. Nana thought her plain and lacking in style. Fontan, lying on his stomach, passed up the pieces of cake which had been put between the candle and the matches on the edge of the night table. But they ended by quarreling.
“Oh, just to think of it!” cried Nana. “She’s got eyes like gimlet holes, and her hair’s the color of tow.”
“Hold your tongue, do!” said Fontan. “She has a superb head of hair and such fire in her looks! It’s lovely the way you women always tear each other to pieces!”
He looked annoyed.
“Come now, we’ve had enough of it!” he said at last in savage tones. “You know I don’t like being bored. Let’s go to sleep, or things’ll take a nasty turn.”
And he blew out the candle, but Nana was furious and went on talking. She was not going to be spoken to in that voice; she was accustomed to being treated with respect! As he did not vouchsafe any further answer, she was silenced, but she could not go to sleep and lay tossing to and fro.
“Great God, have you done moving about?” cried he suddenly, giving a brisk jump upward.
“It isn’t my fault if there are crumbs in the bed,” she said curtly.
In fact, there were crumbs in the bed. She felt them down to her middle; she was everywhere devoured by them. One single crumb was scorching her and making her scratch herself till she bled. Besides, when one eats a cake isn’t it usual to shake out the bedclothes afterward? Fontan, white with rage, had relit the candle, and they both got up and, barefooted and in their night dresses, they turned down the clothes and swept up the crumbs on the sheet with their hands. Fontan went to bed again, shivering, and told her to go to the devil when she advised him to wipe the soles of his feet carefully. And in the end she came back to her old position, but scarce had she stretched herself out than she danced again. There were fresh crumbs in the bed!