m into a mere longing for
happiness and peace. All his manhood, erewhile maddened by wrong,
had departed out of him in the neighborhood of that warm bed and that
suffering woman, whom he was nursing under the influence of her feverish
heat and of remembered delights. He leaned over her and pressed her in
a close embrace, while despite her unmoved features her lips wore a
delicate, victorious smile. But Dr Boutarel made his appearance.

"Well, and how's this dear child?" he said familiarly to Muffat, whom he
treated as her husband. "The deuce, but we've made her talk!"

The doctor was a good-looking man and still young. He had a superb
practice among the gay world, and being very merry by nature and ready
to laugh and joke in the friendliest way with the demimonde ladies with
whom, however, he never went farther, he charged very high fees and got
them paid with the greatest punctuality. Moreover, he would put himself
out to visit them on the most trivial occasions, and Nana, who was
always trembling at the fear of death, would send and fetch him two or
three times a week and would anxiously confide to him little infantile
ills which he would cure to an accompaniment of amusing gossip and
harebrained anecdotes. The ladies all adored him. But this time the
little ill was serious.

Muffat withdrew, deeply moved. Seeing his poor Nana so very weak, his
sole feeling was now one of tenderness. As he was leaving the room she
motioned him back and gave him her forehead to kiss. In a low voice and
with a playfully threatening look she said:

"You know what I've allowed you to do. Go back to your wife, or it's all
over and I shall grow angry!"

The Countess Sabine had been anxious that her daughter's wedding
contract should be signed on a Tuesday in order that the renovated
house, where the paint was still scarcely dry, might be reopened with a
grand entertainment. Five hundred invitations had been issued to people
in all kinds of sets. On the morning of the great day the upholsterers
were still nailing up hangings, and toward nine at night, just when the
lusters were going to be lit, the architect, accompanied by the eager
and interested countess, was given his final orders.

It was one of those spring festivities which have a delicate charm
of their own. Owing to the warmth of the June nights, it had become
possible to open the two doors of the great drawing room and to extend
the dancing floor to the sanded paths of the ga