here! And with that she began a conversation with the
driver, who continued shaking his head by way of saying no. Then as they
drove down the other side of the hill he contented himself by holding
out his whip and muttering, "'Tis down there."

She got up and stretched herself almost bodily out of the carriage door.

"Where is it? Where is it?" she cried with pale cheeks, but as yet she
saw nothing.

At last she caught sight of a bit of wall. And then followed a
succession of little cries and jumps, the ecstatic behavior of a woman
overcome by a new and vivid sensation.

"I see it! I see it, Zoe! Look out at the other side. Oh, there's a
terrace with brick ornaments on the roof! And there's a hothouse down
there! But the place is immense. Oh, how happy I am! Do look, Zoe! Now,
do look!"

The carriage had by this time pulled up before the park gates. A
side door was opened, and the gardener, a tall, dry fellow, made his
appearance, cap in hand. Nana made an effort to regain her dignity,
for the driver seemed now to be suppressing a laugh behind his dry,
speechless lips. She refrained from setting off at a run and listened
to the gardener, who was a very talkative fellow. He begged Madame to
excuse the disorder in which she found everything, seeing that he had
only received Madame's letter that very morning. But despite all his
efforts, she flew off at a tangent and walked so quickly that Zoe could
scarcely follow her. At the end of the avenue she paused for a moment
in order to take the house in at a glance. It was a great pavilion-like
building in the Italian manner, and it was flanked by a smaller
construction, which a rich Englishman, after two years' residence in
Naples, had caused to be erected and had forthwith become disgusted
with.

"I'll take Madame over the house," said the gardener.

But she had outrun him entirely, and she shouted back that he was not
to put himself out and that she would go over the house by herself. She
preferred doing that, she said. And without removing her hat she dashed
into the different rooms, calling to Zoe as she did so, shouting her
impressions from one end of each corridor to the other and filling
the empty house, which for long months had been uninhabited, with
exclamations and bursts of laughter. In the first place, there was the
hall. It was a little damp, but that didn't matter; one wasn't going to
sleep in it. Then came the drawing room, quite the thing, the drawing