ch refusal had made her
accessory to his act. She sank down on an armchair; her legs were seized
with paralysis, and she felt herself to be useless, incapable of action
and destined to stay where she was till she died. But the sudden thought
of Georges comforted her. Georges was still left her; he would be able
to act, perhaps to save them. Thereupon, without seeking aid of anyone
else--for she wished to keep these matters shrouded in the bosom of her
family--she dragged herself up to the next story, her mind possessed by
the idea that she still had someone to love about her. But upstairs she
found an empty room. The porter told her that M. Georges had gone out
at an early hour. The room was haunted by the ghost of yet another
calamity; the bed with its gnawed bedclothes bore witness to someone's
anguish, and a chair which lay amid a heap of clothes on the ground
looked like something dead. Georges must be at that woman's house, and
so with dry eyes and feet that had regained their strength Mme Hugon
went downstairs. She wanted her sons; she was starting to reclaim them.

Since morning Nana had been much worried. First of all it was the baker,
who at nine o'clock had turned up, bill in hand. It was a wretched
story. He had supplied her with bread to the amount of a hundred and
thirty-three francs, and despite her royal housekeeping she could not
pay it. In his irritation at being put off he had presented himself
a score of times since the day he had refused further credit, and the
servants were now espousing his cause. Francois kept saying that Madame
would never pay him unless he made a fine scene; Charles talked of going
upstairs, too, in order to get an old unpaid straw bill settled, while
Victorine advised them to wait till some gentleman was with her, when
they would get the money out of her by suddenly asking for it in the
middle of conversation. The kitchen was in a savage mood: the tradesmen
were all kept posted in the course events were taking, and there were
gossiping consultations, lasting three or four hours on a stretch,
during which Madame was stripped, plucked and talked over with the
wrathful eagerness peculiar to an idle, overprosperous servants' hall.
Julien, the house steward, alone pretended to defend his mistress.
She was quite the thing, whatever they might say! And when the others
accused him of sleeping with her he laughed fatuously, thereby driving
the cook to distraction, for she would have like