e Zoe was walking softly about the room. She spoke of
yesterday's great hit. Madame had shown such talent; she sang so well!
Ah! Madame need not fret at all now!

Nana, her elbow dug into her pillow, only tossed her head in reply. Her
nightdress had slipped down on her shoulders, and her hair, unfastened
and entangled, flowed over them in masses.

"Without doubt," she murmured, becoming thoughtful; "but what's to be
done to gain time? I'm going to have all sorts of bothers today. Now
let's see, has the porter come upstairs yet this morning?"

Then both the women talked together seriously. Nana owed three quarters'
rent; the landlord was talking of seizing the furniture. Then, too,
there was a perfect downpour of creditors; there was a livery-stable
man, a needlewoman, a ladies' tailor, a charcoal dealer and others
besides, who came every day and settled themselves on a bench in the
little hall. The charcoal dealer especially was a dreadful fellow--he
shouted on the staircase. But Nana's greatest cause of distress was her
little Louis, a child she had given birth to when she was sixteen
and now left in charge of a nurse in a village in the neighborhood
of Rambouillet. This woman was clamoring for the sum of three hundred
francs before she would consent to give the little Louis back to her.
Nana, since her last visit to the child, had been seized with a fit
of maternal love and was desperate at the thought that she could not
realize a project, which had now become a hobby with her. This was to
pay off the nurse and to place the little man with his aunt, Mme Lerat,
at the Batignolles, whither she could go and see him as often as she
liked.

Meanwhile the lady's maid kept hinting that her mistress ought to have
confided her necessities to the old miser.

"To be sure, I told him everything," cried Nana, "and he told me in
answer that he had too many big liabilities. He won't go beyond his
thousand francs a month. The nigger's beggared just at present; I expect
he's lost at play. As to that poor Mimi, he stands in great need of a
loan himself; a fall in stocks has cleaned him out--he can't even bring
me flowers now."

She was speaking of Daguenet. In the self-abandonment of her awakening
she had no secrets from Zoe, and the latter, inured to such confidences,
received them with respectful sympathy. Since Madame condescended to
speak to her of her affairs she would permit herself to say what she
thought. Besides, she wa