madame?"

And conversation was about to ensue on this topic when noisy voices were
heard at the dressing-room door. Bordenave drew back the slide over a
grated peephole of the kind used in convents. Fontan was outside with
Prulliere and Bosc, and all three had bottles under their arms and their
hands full of glasses. He began knocking and shouting out that it was
his patron saint's day and that he was standing champagne round. Nana
consulted the prince with a glance. Eh! Oh dear, yes! His Highness did
not want to be in anyone's way; he would be only too happy! But without
waiting for permission Fontan came in, repeating in baby accents:

"Me not a cad, me pay for champagne!"

Then all of a sudden he became aware of the prince's presence of which
he had been totally ignorant. He stopped short and, assuming an air of
farcical solemnity, announced:

"King Dagobert is in the corridor and is desirous of drinking the health
of His Royal Highness."

The prince having made answer with a smile, Fontan's sally was voted
charming. But the dressing room was too small to accommodate everybody,
and it became necessary to crowd up anyhow, Satin and Mme Jules standing
back against the curtain at the end and the men clustering closely round
the half-naked Nana. The three actors still had on the costumes they had
been wearing in the second act, and while Prulliere took off his Alpine
admiral's cocked hat, the huge plume of which would have knocked the
ceiling, Bosc, in his purple cloak and tinware crown, steadied himself
on his tipsy old legs and greeted the prince as became a monarch
receiving the son of a powerful neighbor. The glasses were filled, and
the company began clinking them together.

"I drink to Your Highness!" said ancient Bosc royally.

"To the army!" added Prulliere.

"To Venus!" cried Fontan.

The prince complaisantly poised his glass, waited quietly, bowed thrice
and murmured:

"Madame! Admiral! Your Majesty!"

Then he drank it off. Count Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard had
followed his example. There was no more jesting now--the company were at
court. Actual life was prolonged in the life of the theater, and a sort
of solemn farce was enacted under the hot flare of the gas. Nana, quite
forgetting that she was in her drawers and that a corner of her shift
stuck out behind, became the great lady, the queen of love, in act to
open her most private palace chambers to state dignitaries. In every
sentence she