a schoolgirl enjoying a holiday escapade. It was an
amour, she thought, with a young cousin to whom she was going to be
married. And so she trembled at the slightest noise and dread lest
parents should hear her, while making the delicious experiments and
suffering the voluptuous terrors attendant on a girl's first slip from
the path of virtue.

Nana in those days was subject to the fancies a sentimental girl will
indulge in. She would gaze at the moon for hours. One night she had a
mind to go down into the garden with Georges when all the household was
asleep. When there they strolled under the trees, their arms round each
other's waists, and finally went and laid down in the grass, where the
dew soaked them through and through. On another occasion, after a long
silence up in the bedroom, she fell sobbing on the lad's neck, declaring
in broken accents that she was afraid of dying. She would often croon a
favorite ballad of Mme Lerat's, which was full of flowers and birds. The
song would melt her to tears, and she would break off in order to clasp
Georges in a passionate embrace and to extract from him vows of undying
affection. In short she was extremely silly, as she herself would
admit when they both became jolly good fellows again and sat up smoking
cigarettes on the edge of the bed, dangling their bare legs over it the
while and tapping their heels against its wooden side.

But what utterly melted the young woman's heart was Louiset's arrival.
She had an access of maternal affection which was as violent as a mad
fit. She would carry off her boy into the sunshine outside to watch him
kicking about; she would dress him like a little prince and roll with
him in the grass. The moment he arrived she decided that he was to
sleep near her, in the room next hers, where Mme Lerat, whom the country
greatly affected, used to begin snoring the moment her head touched
the pillow. Louiset did not hurt Zizi's position in the least. On the
contrary, Nana said that she had now two children, and she treated them
with the same wayward tenderness. At night, more than ten times running,
she would leave Zizi to go and see if Louiset were breathing properly,
but on her return she would re-embrace her Zizi and lavish on him the
caresses that had been destined for the child. She played at being Mamma
while he wickedly enjoyed being dandled in the arms of the great wench
and allowed himself to be rocked to and fro like a baby that is being