hunting. Both women, looking different ways, kept shrugging
their shoulders and asking themselves how the deuce the other could tell
such whoppers! As to Lucy Stewart, she quietly confessed to her origin
and of her own accord spoke of her childhood and of the days when her
father, the wheel greaser at the Northern Railway Terminus, used to
treat her to an apple puff on Sundays.

"Oh, I must tell you about it!" cried the little Maria Blond abruptly.
"Opposite to me there lives a gentleman, a Russian, an awfully rich man!
Well, just fancy, yesterday I received a basket of fruit--oh, it just
was a basket! Enormous peaches, grapes as big as that, simply wonderful
for the time of year! And in the middle of them six thousand-franc
notes! It was the Russian's doing. Of course I sent the whole thing back
again, but I must say my heart ached a little--when I thought of the
fruit!"

The ladies looked at one another and pursed up their lips. At her age
little Maria Blond had a pretty cheek! Besides, to think that such
things should happen to trollops like her! Infinite was their contempt
for her among themselves. It was Lucy of whom they were particularly
jealous, for they were beside themselves at the thought of her three
princes. Since Lucy had begun taking a daily morning ride in the Bois
they all had become Amazons, as though a mania possessed them.

Day was about to dawn, and Nana turned her eyes away from the door, for
she was relinquishing all hope. The company were bored to distraction.
Rose Mignon had refused to sing the "Slipper" and sat huddled up on a
sofa, chatting in a low voice with Fauchery and waiting for Mignon, who
had by now won some fifty louis from Vandeuvres. A fat gentleman with
a decoration and a serious cast of countenance had certainly given a
recitation in Alsatian accents of "Abraham's Sacrifice," a piece in
which the Almighty says, "By My blasted Name" when He swears, and Isaac
always answers with a "Yes, Papa!" Nobody, however, understood what it
was all about, and the piece had been voted stupid. People were at
their wits' end how to make merry and to finish the night with
fitting hilarity. For a moment or two Labordette conceived the idea of
denouncing different women in a whisper to La Faloise, who still went
prowling round each individual lady, looking to see if she were hiding
his handkerchief in her bosom. Soon, as there were still some bottles of
champagne on the sideboard, the young men aga