in
under a curtain, rendered visible rosewood furniture and hangings and
chairbacks of figured damask with a pattern of big blue flowers on a
gray ground. But in the soft atmosphere of that slumbering chamber Nana
suddenly awoke with a start, as though surprised to find an empty place
at her side. She looked at the other pillow lying next to hers; there
was the dint of a human head among its flounces: it was still warm. And
groping with one hand, she pressed the knob of an electric bell by her
bed's head.

"He's gone then?" she asked the maid who presented herself.

"Yes, madame, Monsieur Paul went away not ten minutes back. As Madame
was tired, he did not wish to wake her. But he ordered me to tell Madame
that he would come tomorrow."

As she spoke Zoe, the lady's maid, opened the outer shutter. A flood of
daylight entered. Zoe, a dark brunette with hair in little plaits, had
a long canine face, at once livid and full of seams, a snub nose, thick
lips and two black eyes in continual movement.

"Tomorrow, tomorrow," repeated Nana, who was not yet wide awake, "is
tomorrow the day?"

"Yes, madame, Monsieur Paul has always come on the Wednesday."

"No, now I remember," said the young woman, sitting up. "It's all
changed. I wanted to tell him so this morning. He would run against the
nigger! We should have a nice to-do!"

"Madame did not warn me; I couldn't be aware of it," murmured Zoe. "When
Madame changes her days she will do well to tell me so that I may know.
Then the old miser is no longer due on the Tuesday?"

Between themselves they were wont thus gravely to nickname as "old
miser" and "nigger" their two paying visitors, one of whom was a
tradesman of economical tendencies from the Faubourg Saint-Denis, while
the other was a Walachian, a mock count, whose money, paid always at the
most irregular intervals, never looked as though it had been honestly
come by. Daguenet had made Nana give him the days subsequent to the old
miser's visits, and as the trader had to be at home by eight o'clock
in the morning, the young man would watch for his departure from Zoes
kitchen and would take his place, which was still quite warm, till ten
o'clock. Then he, too, would go about his business. Nana and he were
wont to think it a very comfortable arrangement.

"So much the worse," said Nana; "I'll write to him this afternoon. And
if he doesn't receive my letter, then tomorrow you will stop him coming
in."

In the meantim