r,
she began blackguarding her own class with all the terror and disgust
peculiar to a woman who had risen successfully above it. That very
afternoon she had read in the Figaro an account of the proceedings at a
public meeting which had verged on the comic. Owing to the slang words
that had been used and to the piggish behavior of a drunken man who had
got himself chucked, she was laughing at those proceedings still.

"Oh, those drunkards!" she said with a disgusted air. "No, look you
here, their republic would be a great misfortune for everybody! Oh, may
God preserve us the emperor as long as possible!"

"God will hear your prayer, my dear," Muffat replied gravely. "To be
sure, the emperor stands firm."

He liked her to express such excellent views. Both, indeed, understood
one another in political matters. Vandeuvres and Philippe Hugon likewise
indulged in endless jokes against the "cads," the quarrelsome set who
scuttled off the moment they clapped eyes on a bayonet. But Georges that
evening remained pale and somber.

"What can be the matter with that baby?" asked Nana, noticing his
troubled appearance.

"With me? Nothing--I am listening," he muttered.

But he was really suffering. On rising from table he had heard Philippe
joking with the young woman, and now it was Philippe, and not himself,
who sat beside her. His heart, he knew not why, swelled to bursting.
He could not bear to see them so close together; such vile thoughts
oppressed him that shame mingled with his anguish. He who laughed
at Satin, who had accepted Steiner and Muffat and all the rest, felt
outraged and murderous at the thought that Philippe might someday touch
that woman.

"Here, take Bijou," she said to comfort him, and she passed him the
little dog which had gone to sleep on her dress.

And with that Georges grew happy again, for with the beast still warm
from her lap in his arms, he held, as it were, part of her.

Allusion had been made to a considerable loss which Vandeuvres had
last night sustained at the Imperial Club. Muffat, who did not play,
expressed great astonishment, but Vandeuvres smilingly alluded to his
imminent ruin, about which Paris was already talking. The kind of death
you chose did not much matter, he averred; the great thing was to die
handsomely. For some time past Nana had noticed that he was nervous and
had a sharp downward droop of the mouth and a fitful gleam in the depths
of his clear eyes. But he retained