ough a queen
were passing. She sported the blue and white colors of the Vandeuvres
stable, and her dress was remarkable. It consisted of a little blue
silk bodice and tunic, which fitted closely to the body and bulged out
enormously behind her waist, thereby bringing her lower limbs into bold
relief in such a manner as to be extremely noticeable in that epoch of
voluminous skirts. Then there was a white satin dress with white
satin sleeves and a sash worn crosswise over the shoulders, the whole
ornamented with silver guipure which shone in the sun. In addition to
this, in order to be still more like a jockey, she had stuck a blue
toque with a white feather jauntily upon her chignon, the fair tresses
from which flowed down beyond her shoulders and resembled an enormous
russet pigtail.

Twelve struck. The public would have to wait more than three hours
for the Grand Prix to be run. When the landau had drawn up beside the
barriers Nana settled herself comfortably down as though she were in her
own house. A whim had prompted her to bring Bijou and Louiset with her,
and the dog crouched among her skirts, shivering with cold despite
the heat of the day, while amid a bedizenment of ribbons and laces the
child's poor little face looked waxen and dumb and white in the open
air. Meanwhile the young woman, without troubling about the people near
her, talked at the top of her voice with Georges and Philippe Hugon, who
were seated opposite on the front seat among such a mountain of bouquets
of white roses and blue myosotis that they were buried up to their
shoulders.

"Well then," she was saying, "as he bored me to death, I showed him the
door. And now it's two days that he's been sulking."

She was talking of Muffat, but she took care not to confess to the young
men the real reason for this first quarrel, which was that one evening
he had found a man's hat in her bedroom. She had indeed brought home a
passer-by out of sheer ennui--a silly infatuation.

"You have no idea how funny he is," she continued, growing merry over
the particulars she was giving. "He's a regular bigot at bottom, so he
says his prayers every evening. Yes, he does. He's under the impression
I notice nothing because I go to bed first so as not to be in his way,
but I watch him out of the corner of my eye. Oh, he jaws away, and then
he crosses himself when he turns round to step over me and get to the
inside of the bed."

"Jove, it's sly," muttered Philippe