capital and asked about by every foreigner. The splendors of this
crowd were enhanced by the madness of her profligacy as though it were
the very crown, the darling passion, of the nation. Then there were
unions of a night, continual passages of desire, which she lost count
of the morning after, and these sent her touring through the grand
restaurants and on fine days, as often as not, to "Madrid." The staffs
of all the embassies visited her, and she, Lucy Stewart, Caroline Hequet
and Maria Blond would dine in the society of gentlemen who murdered the
French language and paid to be amused, engaging them by the evening with
orders to be funny and yet proving so blase and so worn out that they
never even touched them. This the ladies called "going on a spree," and
they would return home happy at having been despised and would finish
the night in the arms of the lovers of their choice.

When she did not actually throw the men at his head Count Muffat
pretended not to know about all this. However, he suffered not a little
from the lesser indignities of their daily life. The mansion in the
Avenue de Villiers was becoming a hell, a house full of mad people, in
which every hour of the day wild disorders led to hateful complications.
Nana even fought with her servants. One moment she would be very nice
with Charles, the coachman. When she stopped at a restaurant she would
send him out beer by the waiter and would talk with him from the inside
of her carriage when he slanged the cabbies at a block in the traffic,
for then he struck her as funny and cheered her up. Then the next moment
she called him a fool for no earthly reason. She was always squabbling
over the straw, the bran or the oats; in spite of her love for animals
she thought her horses ate too much. Accordingly one day when she was
settling up she accused the man of robbing her. At this Charles got in
a rage and called her a whore right out; his horses, he said, were
distinctly better than she was, for they did not sleep with everybody.
She answered him in the same strain, and the count had to separate them
and give the coachman the sack. This was the beginning of a rebellion
among the servants. When her diamonds had been stolen Victorine and
Francois left. Julien himself disappeared, and the tale ran that the
master had given him a big bribe and had begged him to go, because
he slept with the mistress. Every week there were new faces in the
servants' hall. Never was