feet were cut and
bleeding, for they had been torn by the grating. For a long while she
remained sitting on the edge of the bed, listening and listening. Toward
morning, however, she went to sleep again, and at eight o'clock, when
she woke up, she escaped from the hotel and ran to her aunt's. When Mme
Lerat, who happened just then to be drinking her morning coffee with
Zoe, beheld her bedraggled plight and haggard face, she took note of the
hour and at once understood the state of the case.

"It's come to it, eh?" she cried. "I certainly told you that he would
take the skin off your back one of these days. Well, well, come in;
you'll always find a kind welcome here."

Zoe had risen from her chair and was muttering with respectful
familiarity:

"Madame is restored to us at last. I was waiting for Madame."

But Mme Lerat insisted on Nana's going and kissing Louiset at once,
because, she said, the child took delight in his mother's nice ways.
Louiset, a sickly child with poor blood, was still asleep, and when
Nana bent over his white, scrofulous face, the memory of all she had
undergone during the last few months brought a choking lump into her
throat.

"Oh, my poor little one, my poor little one!" she gasped, bursting into
a final fit of sobbing.

CHAPTER IX

The Petite Duchesse was being rehearsed at the Varietes. The first act
had just been carefully gone through, and the second was about to begin.
Seated in old armchairs in front of the stage, Fauchery and Bordenave
were discussing various points while the prompter, Father Cossard, a
little humpbacked man perched on a straw-bottomed chair, was turning
over the pages of the manuscript, a pencil between his lips.

"Well, what are they waiting for?" cried Bordenave on a sudden, tapping
the floor savagely with his heavy cane. "Barillot, why don't they
begin?"

"It's Monsieur Bosc that has disappeared," replied Barillot, who was
acting as second stage manager.'

Then there arose a tempest, and everybody shouted for Bosc while
Bordenave swore.

"Always the same thing, by God! It's all very well ringing for 'em:
they're always where they've no business to be. And then they grumble
when they're kept till after four o'clock."

But Bosc just then came in with supreme tranquillity.

"Eh? What? What do they want me for? Oh, it's my turn! You ought to have
said so. All right! Simonne gives the cue: 'Here are the guests,' and I
come in. Which way must I come