n street child, she nonetheless
appeared charming and as though she were a satire on the personage she
represented. Her song at her entrance on the stage was full of lines
quaint enough to make you cry with laughter and of complaints about
Mars, who was getting ready to desert her for the companionship
of Venus. She sang it with a chaste reserve so full of sprightly
suggestiveness that the public warmed amain. The husband and Steiner,
sitting side by side, were laughing complaisantly, and the whole house
broke out in a roar when Prulliere, that great favorite, appeared as a
general, a masquerade Mars, decked with an enormous plume and dragging
along a sword, the hilt of which reached to his shoulder. As for him, he
had had enough of Diana; she had been a great deal too coy with him, he
averred. Thereupon Diana promised to keep a sharp eye on him and to be
revenged. The duet ended with a comic yodel which Prulliere delivered
very amusingly with the yell of an angry tomcat. He had about him all
the entertaining fatuity of a young leading gentleman whose love affairs
prosper, and he rolled around the most swaggering glances, which excited
shrill feminine laughter in the boxes.

Then the public cooled again, for the ensuing scenes were found
tiresome. Old Bosc, an imbecile Jupiter with head crushed beneath the
weight of an immense crown, only just succeeded in raising a smile among
his audience when he had a domestic altercation with Juno on the subject
of the cook's accounts. The march past of the gods, Neptune, Pluto,
Minerva and the rest, was well-nigh spoiling everything. People grew
impatient; there was a restless, slowly growing murmur; the audience
ceased to take an interest in the performance and looked round at the
house. Lucy began laughing with Labordette; the Count de Vandeuvres
was craning his neck in conversation behind Blanche's sturdy shoulders,
while Fauchery, out of the corners of his eyes, took stock of the
Muffats, of whom the count appeared very serious, as though he had not
understood the allusions, and the countess smiled vaguely, her eyes lost
in reverie. But on a sudden, in this uncomfortable state of things, the
applause of the clapping contingent rattled out with the regularity of
platoon firing. People turned toward the stage. Was it Nana at last?
This Nana made one wait with a vengeance.

It was a deputation of mortals whom Ganymede and Iris had introduced,
respectable middle-class persons, dec