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By Root 1397 0

left her by an aunt, and which she ought to have received at the time of her marriage. Ruined, and living very moderately with the remnants of his great fortune, he allowed himself to be finished little by little by the countess, who devoured the leavings Nana had disdained. Sabine, corrupted by that woman’s promiscuousness, incited to extremes, became the final sapper, the very canker of the home. After various adventures she had returned, and he had taken her back in the resignation of Christian pardon. She accompanied him like his living shame. But he, becoming more and more indifferent, ended by no longer suffering from such things. Heaven had rescued him from the arms of woman to place him again in the very arms of God. It was a religious prolongation of Nana’s voluptuous pleasures, with the stutterings, the prayers, and the despondencies—the humilities of an accursed creature crushed beneath the mud of his origin. In the dark corners of churches, his knees chilled by the cold stones, he found again his enjoyments of former days, the spasms of his muscles and the delicious perturbations of his intelligence, in the same atonement of the obscure requirements of his being.

The night of the rupture Mignon called at the Avenue de Villiers. He had got accustomed to Fauchery, he had ended by discovering a thousand advantages in the presence of a husband at his wife’s. He left to him all the little cares of the home, relied on him for an active supervision, and used the money that came from his dramatic successes for the daily expenses of the household; and as, on the other hand, Fauchery behaved very reasonably—never indulging in any ridiculous jealousy, but being as accommodating as Mignon himself with regard to the opportunities Rose had—the two men got on together better than ever, delighted with their association, so fertile in every kind of happiness, and each one making his nest beside the other, in a home where neither of them any longer stood on ceremony. It was regulated, it worked very well, they rivalled each other in their exertions for the common felicity. It just happened that Mignon had called, by Fauchery’s advice, to see if he could not entice away Nana’s maid, whose wonderful intelligence the journalist had fully appreciated. Rose was in great distress. For a month past she had had to put up with inexperienced girls, who caused her continual embarrassments.

As Zoé admitted him, he pushed her at once into the dining-room. At the first word she smiled. It was impossible. She was leaving madame, she was about to set up in business on her own account; and she added, with an air of discreet vanity, that every day she was receiving proposals—all the ladies wanted her. Madame Blanche had offered her a bridge of gold to get her back. Zoé was going to acquire old Tricon’s business, an old project which she had nursed for a long while, an ambition to realise a fortune, in which she was about to invest her savings. She was full of great ideas. She dreamed of enlarging the concern, of taking a mansion, and collecting in it every pleasure. It was for this that she had even tried to get hold of Satin, a little blockhead who was now dying in the hospital, she had so ruined her health.

Mignon having persisted in his offer, mentioning the risks one runs in business, Zoé, without explaining herself as to the nature of her projected establishment, contented herself with saying, with a self-satisfied smile, just as though she had taken a confectioner’s shop,

“Oh! affairs of luxury always succeed. You see I have been so long with the others that now I wish the others to be with me.”

And a ferocious feeling made her curl her lip. She would at last be “madame.” She would have at her feet, for the sum of a few louis, those women whose slops she had been emptying for fifteen years past.

Mignon wished to see Nana, and Zoé left him for a minute, after saying that madame had passed a very unpleasant day. He had only called there once, he did not know the house at all. The dining-room, with its Gobelin tapestry, its sideboard,