enly restraining herself and skipping to another topic:

"Why haven't you told me that you knew Nana?"

"Nana! I've never set eyes on her."

"Honor bright? I've been told that you've been to bed with her."

But Mignon, coming in front of them, his finger to his lips, made them
a sign to be silent. And when Lucy questioned him he pointed out a young
man who was passing and murmured:

"Nana's fancy man."

Everybody looked at him. He was a pretty fellow. Fauchery recognized
him; it was Daguenet, a young man who had run through three hundred
thousand francs in the pursuit of women and who now was dabbling
in stocks, in order from time to time to treat them to bouquets and
dinners. Lucy made the discovery that he had fine eyes.

"Ah, there's Blanche!" she cried. "It's she who told me that you had
been to bed with Nana."

Blanche de Sivry, a great fair girl, whose good-looking face showed
signs of growing fat, made her appearance in the company of a spare,
sedulously well-groomed and extremely distinguished man.

"The Count Xavier de Vandeuvres," Fauchery whispered in his companion's
ear.

The count and the journalist shook hands, while Blanche and Lucy entered
into a brisk, mutual explanation. One of them in blue, the other in
rose-pink, they stood blocking the way with their deeply flounced
skirts, and Nana's name kept repeating itself so shrilly in their
conversation that people began to listen to them. The Count de
Vandeuvres carried Blanche off. But by this time Nana's name was echoing
more loudly than ever round the four walls of the entrance hall amid
yearnings sharpened by delay. Why didn't the play begin? The men pulled
out their watches; late-comers sprang from their conveyances before
these had fairly drawn up; the groups left the sidewalk, where the
passers-by were crossing the now-vacant space of gaslit pavement,
craning their necks, as they did so, in order to get a peep into the
theater. A street boy came up whistling and planted himself before a
notice at the door, then cried out, "Woa, Nana!" in the voice of a tipsy
man and hied on his way with a rolling gait and a shuffling of his old
boots. A laugh had arisen at this. Gentlemen of unimpeachable appearance
repeated: "Nana, woa, Nana!" People were crushing; a dispute arose at
the ticket office, and there was a growing clamor caused by the hum of
voices calling on Nana, demanding Nana in one of those accesses of silly
facetiousness and sheer animal