oemaker's, where customers never seemed
to enter. Then there were two or three upholsterers', deep in dust, and
a smoky, sleepy reading room and library, the shaded lamps in which cast
a green and slumberous light all the evening through. There was never
anyone in this corner save well-dressed, patient gentlemen, who prowled
about the wreckage peculiar to a stage door, where drunken sceneshifters
and ragged chorus girls congregate. In front of the theater a single
gas jet in a ground-glass globe lit up the doorway. For a moment or two
Muffat thought of questioning Mme Bron; then he grew afraid lest Nana
should get wind of his presence and escape by way of the boulevard. So
he went on the march again and determined to wait till he was turned out
at the closing of the gates, an event which had happened on two previous
occasions. The thought of returning home to his solitary bed simply
wrung his heart with anguish. Every time that golden-haired girls and
men in dirty linen came out and stared at him he returned to his post in
front of the reading room, where, looking in between two advertisements
posted on a windowpane, he was always greeted by the same sight. It
was a little old man, sitting stiff and solitary at the vast table and
holding a green newspaper in his green hands under the green light of
one of the lamps. But shortly before ten o'clock another gentleman, a
tall, good-looking, fair man with well-fitting gloves, was also walking
up and down in front of the stage door. Thereupon at each successive
turn the pair treated each other to a suspicious sidelong glance. The
count walked to the corner of the two galleries, which was adorned
with a high mirror, and when he saw himself therein, looking grave and
elegant, he was both ashamed and nervous.

Ten o'clock struck, and suddenly it occurred to Muffat that it would be
very easy to find out whether Nana were in her dressing room or not.
He went up the three steps, crossed the little yellow-painted lobby and
slipped into the court by a door which simply shut with a latch. At that
hour of the night the narrow, damp well of a court, with its pestiferous
water closets, its fountain, its back view of the kitchen stove and the
collection of plants with which the portress used to litter the place,
was drenched in dark mist; but the two walls, rising pierced with
windows on either hand, were flaming with light, since the property room
and the firemen's office were situated on