t her bets and was now the bearer of some forty
thousand francs. This only added to her bad temper, for she ought to
have gained a million. Labordette, who during the whole of this episode
had been pretending entire innocence, abandoned Vandeuvres in decisive
terms. Those old families, he opined, were worn out and apt to make a
stupid ending.

"Oh dear no!" said Nana. "It isn't stupid to burn oneself in one's
stable as he did. For my part, I think he made a dashing finish; but,
oh, you know, I'm not defending that story about him and Marechal. It's
too silly. Just to think that Blanche has had the cheek to want to lay
the blame of it on me! I said to her: 'Did I tell him to steal?' Don't
you think one can ask a man for money without urging him to commit
crime? If he had said to me, 'I've got nothing left,' I should have
said to him, 'All right, let's part.' And the matter wouldn't have gone
further."

"Just so," said the aunt gravely "When men are obstinate about a thing,
so much the worse for them!"

"But as to the merry little finish up, oh, that was awfully smart!"
continued Nana. "It appears to have been terrible enough to give you the
shudders! He sent everybody away and boxed himself up in the place with
a lot of petroleum. And it blazed! You should have seen it! Just think,
a great big affair, almost all made of wood and stuffed with hay and
straw! The flames simply towered up, and the finest part of the business
was that the horses didn't want to be roasted. They could be heard
plunging, throwing themselves against the doors, crying aloud just like
human beings. Yes, people haven't got rid of the horror of it yet."

Labordette let a low, incredulous whistle escape him. For his part, he
did not believe in the death of Vandeuvres. Somebody had sworn he had
seen him escaping through a window. He had set fire to his stable in a
fit of aberration, but when it had begun to grow too warm it must have
sobered him. A man so besotted about the women and so utterly worn out
could not possibly die so pluckily.

Nana listened in her disillusionment and could only remark:

"Oh, the poor wretch, it was so beautiful!"

CHAPTER XII

Toward one in the morning, in the great bed of the Venice point
draperies, Nana and the count lay still awake. He had returned to her
that evening after a three days sulking fit. The room, which was dimly
illumined by a lamp, seemed to slumber amid a warm, damp odor of love,
while the