the ground floor, with
the managerial bureau on the left, and on the right and upstairs the
dressing rooms of the company. The mouths of furnaces seemed to be
opening on the outer darkness from top to bottom of this well. The count
had at once marked the light in the windows of the dressing room on the
first floor, and as a man who is comforted and happy, he forgot where he
was and stood gazing upward amid the foul mud and faint decaying smell
peculiar to the premises of this antiquated Parisian building. Big drops
were dripping from a broken waterspout, and a ray of gaslight slipped
from Mme Bron's window and cast a yellow glare over a patch of moss-clad
pavement, over the base of a wall which had been rotted by water from a
sink, over a whole cornerful of nameless filth amid which old pails
and broken crocks lay in fine confusion round a spindling tree growing
mildewed in its pot. A window fastening creaked, and the count fled.

Nana was certainly going to come down. He returned to his post in front
of the reading room; among its slumbering shadows, which seemed only
broken by the glimmer of a night light, the little old man still sat
motionless, his side face sharply outlined against his newspaper.
Then Muffat walked again and this time took a more prolonged turn and,
crossing the large gallery, followed the Galerie des Varietes as far as
that of Feydeau. The last mentioned was cold and deserted and buried in
melancholy shadow. He returned from it, passed by the theater, turned
the corner of the Galerie Saint-Marc and ventured as far as the Galerie
Montmartre, where a sugar-chopping machine in front of a grocer's
interested him awhile. But when he was taking his third turn he was
seized with such dread lest Nana should escape behind his back that he
lost all self-respect. Thereupon he stationed himself beside the fair
gentleman in front of the very theater. Both exchanged a glance of
fraternal humility with which was mingled a touch of distrust, for it
was possible they might yet turn out to be rivals. Some sceneshifters
who came out smoking their pipes between the acts brushed rudely against
them, but neither one nor the other ventured to complain. Three big
wenches with untidy hair and dirty gowns appeared on the doorstep. They
were munching apples and spitting out the cores, but the two men
bowed their heads and patiently braved their impudent looks and rough
speeches, though they were hustled and, as it were, soi