that he ended by
turning comforter. Well, well, he said, she ought to be brave; she was
quite right; it wasn't her fault! But she checked her lamentations of
her own accord in order to say:

"Listen, you must run round and bring me news of him. At once! I wish
it!"

He took his hat and went to get news of Georges. When he returned after
some three quarters of an hour he saw Nana leaning anxiously out of a
window, and he shouted up to her from the pavement that the lad was
not dead and that they even hoped to bring him through. At this she
immediately exchanged grief for excess of joy and began to sing
and dance and vote existence delightful. Zoe, meanwhile, was still
dissatisfied with her washing. She kept looking at the stain, and every
time she passed it she repeated:

"You know it's not gone yet, madame."

As a matter of fact, the pale red stain kept reappearing on one of
the white roses in the carpet pattern. It was as though, on the very
threshold of the room, a splash of blood were barring the doorway.

"Bah!" said the joyous Nana. "That'll be rubbed out under people's feet."

After the following day Count Muffat had likewise forgotten the
incident. For a moment or two, when in the cab which drove him to the
Rue Richelieu, he had busily sworn never to return to that woman's
house. Heaven was warning him; the misfortunes of Philippe and Georges
were, he opined, prophetic of his proper ruin. But neither the sight
of Mme Hugon in tears nor that of the boy burning with fever had been
strong enough to make him keep his vow, and the short-lived horror of
the situation had only left behind it a sense of secret delight at the
thought that he was now well quit of a rival, the charm of whose
youth had always exasperated him. His passion had by this time grown
exclusive; it was, indeed, the passion of a man who has had no youth.
He loved Nana as one who yearned to be her sole possessor, to listen to
her, to touch her, to be breathed on by her. His was now a supersensual
tenderness, verging on pure sentiment; it was an anxious affection and
as such was jealous of the past and apt at times to dream of a day of
redemption and pardon received, when both should kneel before God the
Father. Every day religion kept regaining its influence over him.
He again became a practicing Christian; he confessed himself and
communicated, while a ceaseless struggle raged within him, and remorse
redoubled the joys of sin and of repentance