re with profound attention contemplated an
array of paperweights in the form of glass bowls containing floating
landscapes and flowers.

He was conscious of nothing: he was thinking of Nana. Why had she lied
to him again? That morning she had written and told him not to trouble
about her in the evening, her excuse being that Louiset was ill and that
she was going to pass the night at her aunt's in order to nurse him.
But he had felt suspicious and had called at her house, where he learned
from the porter that Madame had just gone off to her theater. He was
astonished at this, for she was not playing in the new piece. Why then
should she have told him this falsehood, and what could she be doing
at the Varietes that evening? Hustled by a passer-by, the count
unconsciously left the paperweights and found himself in front of
a glass case full of toys, where he grew absorbed over an array of
pocketbooks and cigar cases, all of which had the same blue swallow
stamped on one corner. Nana was most certainly not the same woman! In
the early days after his return from the country she used to drive him
wild with delight, as with pussycat caresses she kissed him all round
his face and whiskers and vowed that he was her own dear pet and the
only little man she adored. He was no longer afraid of Georges, whom his
mother kept down at Les Fondettes. There was only fat Steiner to reckon
with, and he believed he was really ousting him, but he did not dare
provoke an explanation on his score. He knew he was once more in an
extraordinary financial scrape and on the verge of being declared
bankrupt on 'change, so much so that he was clinging fiercely to the
shareholders in the Landes Salt Pits and striving to sweat a final
subscription out of them. Whenever he met him at Nana's she would
explain reasonably enough that she did not wish to turn him out of doors
like a dog after all he had spent on her. Besides, for the last three
months he had been living in such a whirl of sensual excitement
that, beyond the need of possessing her, he had felt no very distinct
impressions. His was a tardy awakening of the fleshly instinct, a
childish greed of enjoyment, which left no room for either vanity or
jealousy. Only one definite feeling could affect him now, and that was
Nana's decreasing kindness. She no longer kissed him on the beard! It
made him anxious, and as became a man quite ignorant of womankind, he
began asking himself what possible cause o