eing
furious, grew enchanted at the thought of playing hostess on a grand
scale. The ladies complimented her on La Mignotte. "It's a stunning
property, my dear!" And then, too, they brought her quite a whiff of
Parisian air, and talking all together with bursts of laughter and
exclamation and emphatic little gestures, they gave her all the petty
gossip of the week just past. By the by, and how about Bordenave? What
had he said about her prank? Oh, nothing much! After bawling about
having her brought back by the police, he had simply put somebody else
in her place at night. Little Violaine was the understudy, and she had
even obtained a very pretty success as the Blonde Venus. Which piece of
news made Nana rather serious.

It was only four o'clock in the afternoon, and there was some talk of
taking a stroll around.

"Oh, I haven't told you," said Nana, "I was just off to get up potatoes
when you arrived."

Thereupon they all wanted to go and dig potatoes without even changing
their dresses first. It was quite a party. The gardener and two helpers
were already in the potato field at the end of the grounds. The ladies
knelt down and began fumbling in the mold with their beringed fingers,
shouting gaily whenever they discovered a potato of exceptional size. It
struck them as so amusing! But Tatan Nene was in a state of triumph!
So many were the potatoes she had gathered in her youth that she forgot
herself entirely and gave the others much good advice, treating them
like geese the while. The gentlemen toiled less strenuously. Mignon
looked every inch the good citizen and father and made his stay in the
country an occasion for completing his boys' education. Indeed, he spoke
to them of Parmentier!

Dinner that evening was wildly hilarious. The company ate ravenously.
Nana, in a state of great elevation, had a warm disagreement with her
butler, an individual who had been in service at the bishop's palace in
Orleans. The ladies smoked over their coffee. An earsplitting noise of
merrymaking issued from the open windows and died out far away under
the serene evening sky while peasants, belated in the lanes, turned and
looked at the flaring rooms.

"It's most tiresome that you're going back the day after tomorrow," said
Nana. "But never mind, we'll get up an excursion all the same!"

They decided to go on the morrow, Sunday, and visit the ruins of the
old Abbey of Chamont, which were some seven kilometers distant. Five
ca